


The Shōki

by Provincial_Isagani



Category: Crossover - The Witcher & Samurai of Hyuga, Samurai of Hyuga (Interactive Fiction), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Witcher Fusion, Dark Fantasy, Edo Period, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Multi, Original Story - Freeform, a witcher story set in japan since somebody had to do it, not an original world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Provincial_Isagani/pseuds/Provincial_Isagani
Summary: Hundreds of years after the legend of the White Wolf, a man in the land of the rising sun walks the demon-strewn Path.A series of short stories based on The Witcher, Samurai of Hyuga, and Japanese Folklore and History.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The Northern Realms had the White Wolf—what about the lands beyond?  
> 

Lexicon:

 ** _Shōki:_** a figure in Japanese mythology who dispels and slays demons through sword and sorcery. The name means _‘Demon-queller.’_ In Chinese, his name is Zhong Kui, and it is the name used as the Japanese translation for ‘Witcher’ in this story. The Witchers are European warriors of the same caliber and purpose as the shōki.

* * *

The night was foul.

This was the wrong side of an otherwise pleasurable city. The smell of the raging sea was sharp and salty; the fainting stench of fish that had been gutted this morning was harsh on the swordsman’s sharp sense of smell, and the cold, turbulent wind only made things worse.

He cut a strange figure in the dark—clad like a samurai with dark armor and two swords at his side, yet walking on the muddy cobblestones like an ordinary peasant. No entourage carried his banners despite the _three-kamon_ jacket over his armor. A keener look, though, would have revealed that the dark _haori_ coat was slightly tattered and embroidered with three strange orange symbols instead of the sigil of a samurai family; that his dark armor had marks that were too ragged to be brought about by a sword; and that the _wakizashi_ at his side was too long and too much like his _katana_ to be a proper samurai’s secondary weapon. Anyone who had some degree of knowledge would immediately cower behind the closed windows of their seaside shack after that.

The night was humid. A storm was coming—the sharp smell of thunder was in the air—and the full moon’s tide was not going to help. The swordsman would need to find lodgings for the night. Problem was, he had no contract for weeks and barely enough money to feed himself properly for days.

It was how the swordsman found himself in the crime-, merchant-, and prostitute-ridden city of Yoshiwara, in the hopes that a certain _daimyo_ or shipmaster needed a silver sword to keep _iso-onna_ sirens from plucking men off ships with their songs, wiles, and long tails on the Celestial Sea.

However, the first cry for help did not come from a lord or shipmaster, but from a bridge that tapered off to the stranger’s left. Though it was dark and the distance was far, the armored man saw it clearly—a group of three men, plus one slight man yelling obscenities as he was held over the edge of the bridge. Their words were sharp and clear to the stranger’s ears.

“Give me the coin you stole from me!” The man holding up the victim snarled.

“Didn’t steal anything,” the man in the air spat, in a voice surprisingly deep for his thin frame. “Not my fault your cards were horseshit!”

“Drop him in the water and be done with it!” yelled the snarler’s companion.

“Take his coin first!” yelled another.

The man in the air responded by jabbing his _geta-_ clad feet into one companion’s nose.

It all happened quickly after that. A _netsuke_ pouch was sliced off an obi sash, fiery remarks were exchanged, and then a young man was tossed off Yoshiwara Bridge and into the estuary that flowed into the Celestial Sea.

The three men ran off, but the stranger remained. He heard no footsteps or heartbeats that indicated that others would save the young man. And the young man would not have much time.

 _Don’t get involved,_ the swordsman’s master had once said. But it was the same master who once told him to find another young boy to torture and train in the way of the steel and silver sword.

The stranger ran to the center of the bridge in seconds, faster than any human, and jumped.

The water was grimy, almost oily in the filth and natural brack; to make matters worse, it was freezing cold in the autumn. A normal man might have choked at the temperature, but the stranger simply kicked himself towards where he could feel movement in the water. He swam down quickly until he found the thrashing young man with his eyes still open and his mouth shut tight. The swordsman put an arm around the man’s slim waist, ready to hoist him up to the surface.

If things didn’t get more complicated.

The water was dark and murky, but not enough so that the swordsman’s powerful eyes could not track the true cause behind the oily blackness. A dark tail lashed out from the depths, quick as a bat, wrapping around the young man’s legs. Despite the swordsman planting a desperate hand onto the young man’s mouth, he screamed and let loose his precious source of life. He began to thrash, stronger than the swordsman anticipated, and that combined with the demanding dark tail caused the fool to slip from the warrior’s grasp.

That was when the monster arose from the depths. Prey firmly coiled in its tail, a dark, long-haired, oily head rose from the depths of the water. A _nure-onna_ —a wet-woman. But to call it a woman gave the beast too much credit—three pairs of dark, dark eyes were set on a too-smooth face marred by a gaping black maw of fibrous fish teeth. Attached to that head was no neck, but a slim boa’s body with insect-like arms. The oily head hissed, blurred, its black teeth rushing for the unconscious man’s pale throat—

The swordsman deftly drew a symbol into the dark water with his fingers. A sparking sensation crackled through the water, only for a split second but enough for the wet-woman—a creature ever frightened of lightning above—to pause with its teeth mere inches from the man’s throat.

Then a blast of power hit the serpent square in the face, slamming it into the rocks on the other side of the riverbank. Blacker blood stained black water, and the swordsman, shoved slightly away by his own magic, grabbed the young man by the kimono and kicked his strong legs toward the surface.

The stranger broke through the water in mere seconds without losing breath, and began trudging towards the riverbank to drop the hopefully-not-drowned man onto the muddy and stony ground. But the swordsman was not done yet; he had felt the strong rippling in the water just as he settled the man onto the rounded stones.

The wet-woman burst through the water just as the swordsman turned around, its black body reared at a height at least thrice of his own. It screamed, a high-pitched, scraping noise like a rusty sword being drawn too quickly, its black blood dripping down its heaving black-green chest. It regarded the stranger with angry, predatory eyes.

Then it swooped down, its nest of fibrous teeth fully bared and its frightening limbs extended.

The swordsman only stayed his ground, his steady hand going not for the steel katana but the curious, silver-hilted wakizashi at his side. The monster rushed close enough that the stranger felt its hot, acrid breath, saw the barnacles festering on the gray teeth that were about to snap shut—

The stranger unsheathed his second sword and spun in one smooth, well-practiced movement.

Black blood spattered the bank and the swordsman’s face. The beast, now headless and unmoving, still had its frightening limbs extended.

Then it keeled over and splashed down the shallow side of the river, dousing the swordsman with oily black water and darker ichor.

The swordsman flicked his blade—bright silver like a mirror—eliminating all traces of oily blood. The bright runes, symbols, and spells on the wakizashi prevented vile substances from staining it. He then sheathed the silver sword, sighed tiredly, and attempted to wipe some of the blood off his face.

After a beat, the stranger neared and knelt down the would-be victim. He firmly turned the man on his side, feeling at his neck for a pulse. “Best not be dead,” he grumbled. “Not after all the trouble you gave me.” He smelled some alcohol off of the man, and the swordsman’s mouth twisted.

Feeling the weak signs of a pulse, the swordsman then strongly slapped the man’s back twice. Beats later, the young fool began hacking his lungs out, allowing the swordsman to finally sigh and settle further on the smooth-stoned ground. He allowed himself to look at the young man—he had long hair to rival that of the wet-woman, a sophisticated blue kimono, and wheezes slowly turning into hoarse gasps and swears. When the young man turned over, he saw the headless monster bleeding into the stones, and the strange swordsman staring at him.

“What—!” the young man backed away quickly; the swordsman saw his hands close over a muddy rock. “Get away from me!”

“Don’t worry,” the stranger said evenly. “I didn’t save you just to kill you.” He gave the armed hand a pointed look. “You can put that away, now.”

The man did. “…what’s with your eyes?”

They always began with his eyes, which were golden and slit-pupiled like a cat’s; the real question, in the swordsman’s mind, was the lack of suspicion in the man’s voice. “I’m a _shōki,_ ” the stranger said; a sentence he had said many times before. “I hunt monsters such as that one.” He inclined his head slightly towards the headless wet-woman. The shōki noticed that the monster was very thin for its species, and the banks of a large city was no place for such creatures; it was likely pushed by the tide and forced to starve for days. He felt a twinge of pity. “If the price is right, that is. These eyes of mine help me see such creatures better.”

The young man stared, surprise—though the shōki could have sworn he saw a flash of hatred—on his unexpectedly comely face. “A monster hunter? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“And now you have,” the shōki replied. He stood up, and offered the man a hand. “My name is Akira.”

The man stared at the shōki’s hand, some nervousness on his features. Then a bare muddy hand gripped an armored one, and Akira pulled the stranger up.

“I’m Teru,” the young man supplied, staggering slightly to his feet. He was somewhat taller than Akira, but his face looked much younger than that of the shōki. “And… thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Akira said in a brusque tone too demanding to be mere politeness. “We can discuss my payment somewhere else. Your residence is not far?”

Teru blinked. “Payment?” he asked, and he had the audacity to look scandalized.

“I am not an errant samurai, Teru. I’m a shōki. I saved you from a wet-woman, and I have rendered you a service. Shōki are always paid for their services.” Akira didn’t bother with politeness—he just saved a cheap drunk gambler from being eaten alive, and Akira would have snarled had he been more irritated. He was too tired, too hungry, and he’d prefer to not sit out as well in the oncoming storm.

Akira’s eyes rarely ever tricked him, yet there was something oddly tense in the young man’s features that went beyond the city-dweller’s usual hatred for non-humans. Quickly, however, the tension was gone, and a smile appeared on Teru’s face.

“Forgive me for my lack of manners, shōki-san.” Teru gave a short, polite bow. “I don’t have a home, exactly, but my abode is pleasant and not too far. I can get you a place to stay as much as you’d like, and food… but a bath first, if you don’t mind my saying, because you’re covered in blood and you might frighten the girls. Then we can discuss the rest.” Teru neared and gripped Akira tentatively by the arm, still smiling. “A monster hunter like you might even find a job in the district.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some lore discussions! These tackle any details that may confuse or intrigue you.
> 
> You may have noticed that this eastern witcher lacks the signature medallion; given the fact that the witchers are so dispersed from one another, and so ancient, to the point that they themselves don't know where they first came from, my co-writer and I decided that the medallion is technology unique to the witchers in the Northern Realms. The witchers in Hyuga (Japan) developed something else; the special haori. It will be discussed in future chapters. 
> 
> Zhong Kui in the folk stories is described as a nearly god-like doctor who slays demons. As is common in our world and in the witcher, his tale has been twisted and perverted over centuries (but I have a belief that he created the first witchers. China always makes things first, don't they).
> 
> The nure-onna is often confused with a similar creature, the iso-onna (the former is at times described to look and act in a savage manner, and in other tales acts and looks similarly to the more sentient, siren-like iso-onna); I decided to create a dichotomy by making the nure-onna more reptilian and monstrous than its cousin, and used the description of "long sharp claws and fangs" from the Hyakkai Zukan; the other details are from Matthew Meyer's 'Night Parade of One Thousand Demons.'
> 
> Disclaimer: I am certainly not a scholar of Japanese studies, but I have done my best to ground the lore of this story into the folklore and history of the Land of the Rising Sun from different sources (while also tweaking the lore slightly as to befit the Witcher universe).
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! Please, leave a comment to tell me what you think. Comments are any writer's lifeblood and we thirst for it like bruxas


	2. The Goddess of Yoshiwara I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (not yaoi bs, just your regular Edo period cultural nuance)

The pleasure district of Yoshiwara was famous all throughout Hyuga.

It was said that it was a city that could cater to any taste. There were _tayū_ and _oiran_ who rivaled the _geisha_ with their charm, finery, and skill in the arts—and were naturally more appealing as they could do more than flirt. There were simpler girls—and boys—with unpainted faces and long hair in gauzy shifts, and they were aptly called the Pearls of the Celestial Sea. Each prostitute in Yoshiwara was perfumed, healthy, and expensive, trained in the art of sighs and conversation—proper lovers for lords and samurai instead of the common louse-ridden urchin. The men who weren’t rich in the district were thus oglers, thieves, or both. Akira kept his left hand over his swords as he walked, safely close to his pouch. The beauty of the paper lanterns and smoothness of the cobbled streets were not going to distract him. The same went for the beauty of the young man who laid his arm over Akira’s own.

Akira spared the young man another glance—he had pretty features despite the dark fringes plastered to his face with river water, but the fringes weren’t enough to hide the beginning traces of a scar beneath his left eye. He had a slight frame, and he only looked to be about twenty. _And to think that he had the_ _gall to insult three large men…_ Akira sighed internally. He hoped that the evening would at least end well—meaning, ending with him having a proper roof over his head and his coins untouched in his pocket. There were only a few reasons, Akira knew, as to why Teru would bring him to such an expensive district—and he suspected that it involved the pretty boy gaining more coin and Akira having less.

The two of them were mostly alone on the cobbled streets thanks to the rumble of the oncoming storm, and they painted an almost-perfect picture of a couple. A drunk leaning against the wall of an oiran’s _okiya_ house leered at Akira’s haori and eyes; when the stranger registered Teru leading Akira by the arm, he grinned nastily.

Akira was about to tell Teru to hurry on their way, but the young man finally said a “Here we are.”

They had stopped in front of a large house—one of the more beautiful ones—with flowers and birds painted across the dark wood, and the words _The Forest_ written above the door in golden paint. As with all pleasure houses in Yoshiwara, a large, wooden cage was connected to the house, and some beautifully dressed women were seated inside, on display. One gave Akira a gentle, inviting smile.

_All that makeup will come to waste if they’re not brought inside,_ Akira thought, and grimly wondered if the girls would be left out when the storm strikes. He disliked the pleasure districts—he knew enough to know that the girls were practically shackled to the houses for years, even decades, and made to obey people’s bidding without a choice. It was too close to his life years ago.

“You live here, Teru?”

“I work here,” Teru answered nonchalantly, leading Akira into the house—the lobby was cozy, lit with gentle red and gold light, carpeted in lavender with pillows where clients may sit. “Not that kind of work, mind you.”

Akira kept his silence—certainly, Teru swaggered too much and had too much ferocity to be a proper oiran, but he was beautiful, and in sophisticated clothing…

Teru tugged Akira by the arm, smiling. “Come along, shōki-sama,” he said, and led Akira through an entrance that was less ostentatiously decorated than the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Numerous circular tables and plush pillows littered the new room, and the smells of delicious food, perfume, and sake wafted up to his nose. An elegant but problematic-looking woman sat in a corner, writing furiously in a ledger with an abacus and pouches of ryō next to her hands.

“Mameha-sama!” Teru called out, bowing.

The woman did not look up. In the dim light, Akira saw that her hair was graying. “Yes?”

“Please ask Osamu to prepare a splendid dinner for me and my guest. The most splendid possible. Simply deduct it from my wages, madam.”

“Yes, a dinner for you and...” the woman looked up with a start, and Akira saw her eyes go to his dirty, bloody face, his jacket, his swords, his slit-pupiled eyes. Akira braced himself to be thrown out of the manor, but instead the woman only shakily returned to her writing. “Yes… a dinner for you and... your samurai friend.”

“And a bath and a room,” Teru interjected.

“Just get on with it,” Mameha said, waving a hand. Teru smiled at Akira before taking him again by the arm in a way that Akira supposed was... oddly affectionate. He normally did not appreciate being led around like a dog, but the only physical contact he had been subsisting on lately were shoves from the disdainful or the insistent pulling from the desperate. _I’ll take this change of pace._

Teru led him past red-shuttered rooms and stopped in front of a sliding door ornately painted with foaming waves. Teru slid the door open, poked his head inside, said “Two tubs, Mizu,” and finally motioned for Akira to come in.

It was the largest bathhouse he had ever seen. What seemed to be ten tubs littered the room, each partitioned from the other with translucent, flowery screens. The walls were painted with exquisite waterfalls and birds, and a very small Kondo girl was tossing buckets of hot water into a tub.

Teru led Akira behind another screen as the non-human servant worked. The shōki jumped and nearly went for his steel sword when Teru put his elegant hands on his shoulders.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to...” Teru stepped away and bowed. “Let me help you with your armor, Akira-sama.”

Teru arose from the bow with a gentle, inviting smile, just like that of the oiran in the cage. On Teru’s unpainted face, it was alluring.

Akira backed away slightly. “Thank you, but... that won’t be necessary. And don’t be so formal. I’m a shōki, not a samurai.”

“I insist I help,” Teru replied evenly. “It’s the least I can do for you, Akira.”

Akira didn’t want to note how most repaid him with pinches of copper and a curt goodbye. _Why are you so kind? Can’t you see the color of my eyes?_

“No, it’s… it’s all right, Teru. I can handle myself.”

Teru pouted slightly, then gave a graceful shrug. He drew something white from behind the screen. “Just put this on when you’re done, shōki. I’ll collect your armor after.”

Akira nodded and, as soon as Teru left, shrugged off his shōki’s jacket, his leather cuirass, his tassets, his gauntlets, and the belt which held his few possessions. The enchanted runes on each of his armor pieces shined a dim orange despite the mud and blood. He didn’t leave his armor on the floor—his master had taught him too well for that—but instead left it on some pillows, grime and all. Soon the only thing covering Akira was the white bathing kimono Teru had left him, and he felt strangely light and unburdened for the first time in a long time.

“Are you done?” Teru asked. Akira made a sound of agreement and the young man entered to collect the dark pieces of armor.

It was only years of stoic training that kept Akira from freezing.

Teru was dressed in the same white cotton he was, yet how did he make it look so comely? It was thin enough to reveal, ever slightly, the shade and shape of his body. His waist was impossibly slim, the line of his legs graceful. His thick black hair came to drape his neck and cover the smooth chest bared by the kimono. Teru’s eyes, however... they were unashamedly raking Akira’s skin. And Akira was dirty. Scarred. His hair was nothing but a short and choppy mess, and a large scar slashed his collarbone down to his abdomen.

Akira fought the urge to cover himself.

“You’re very handsome,” Teru said, eyes warm, and it was not the remark Akira expected. He didn’t blush, but something in his chest tugged at the compliment. “The stories your body could tell... You’re lucky your scars aren’t on your face, shōki.” 

The young man stubbornly kept his hair over his left eye, though Akira badly wanted to see everything he had.

“Bath’s ready,” Teru informed, smiling, and he tugged Akira by the wrist to one of the tubs the Kondo _yosei_ had busied over; Akira felt Teru’s thumb brush over the skin where his veins pulsed.

The sensation was as good as steaming water.

“Simply strip and get in,” Teru said, slowly pulling his hand away. “I’ll be right next door.”

Akira reluctantly watched him disappear behind the flowery screen—but his reluctance was replaced by a stirring sensation when he saw the very particular shadow of a kimono falling off a young man’s graceful figure.

Akira sighed, stripped off his kimono, and dipped into the water.

When was the last time he had enjoyed something like this? Bathing while on the Path seemed to be restricted to rivers and waterfalls that, the more remote they were, the more _kappa_ and _ayakashi_ were there, antsy to pull Akira into the water. Everything lately seemed to be one filthy, tiring, and hungry excursion to the next. Or maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him. There was surely some daimyo who had provided him a room or two in the past, but to be attended so keenly, with warm, almost adoring eyes... it almost reminded him of...

Akira rubbed hot water into his face. _No. I’m past that._ He began furiously rubbing at his skin with a scrubbing stone, trying to erase a certain pair of brown eyes from memory.

“Are you trying to scrub your skin off?” An amused voice asked from behind the screen. It was a welcome distraction.

“Just the blood, Teru.”

“What monster gave you that scar?” The young man asked curiously. Akira saw his shadow lean an arm onto the tub’s edge, his hand playing with his long hair. Akira didn’t see the harm in obliging conversation.

“A _yōrōkuzō_ ,” Akira explained. “A wolf spirit that had murdered two innkeepers in Jijinto. It kept on howling about finding its mate.” The rain, thunder, and gash in his stomach were still stark in his memory despite the contract ending two years ago. “And what monster gave you yours, Teru?”

A beat of silence. Then, “Thugs.”

Akira paused. The hatred was palpable in Teru’s voice. “You’re lucky,” Teru continued. “I wish I was as strong as you. Then I wouldn’t have to be locked up here... cleaning the house and dressing the girls gets so monotonous sometimes.”

Akira didn’t respond, getting more embarrassed over his first suspicion that Teru was a prostitute. The sweet touches seemed at first to be a trick to get Akira to pay for a round in bed, but...

“Why are you so friendly?” Akira finally decided to ask. “Don’t get me wrong, but most wouldn’t deign to chat with a shōki, much less treat them well.”

“You saved my life,” Teru replied. “And why would persons usually not deign to speak with people like you?” He sounded genuinely curious, his shadow cocking its head. The innocence of the gesture tugged, once more, at Akira’s chest.

“Because we’ve been mutated.” Not-human. Products of vile potions and viler magic. Useless relics of the past. 

“So you’re different,” Teru said, still in that smiling voice of his. “Different is nice.”

* * *

Soon Akira was once more walking along a hall painted with flowers. A handsome man’s arm was lying on top of his own, and a new indigo kimono covered his body—another gift from the man whom he had so fortuitously decided to save. This time, Akira was in such a good mood that he was now leading the walk.

“And where do shōki come from, Akira? I meant it when I said I’ve never heard of such a class of warriors before.”

Teru was talkative and inquisitive; this question was to be expected, but Akira did not mind—he hadn’t had a proper conversation outside of contract business for quite some time, and a chat with Teru was something he was more than willing to give. He and the young man seemed to agree on most things: the heaviness of the city was better traded for the pleasant sensation of open air; the hypocrisy of _samurai, shinto_ , and _sohei_ ; the impending hunger of them both. They had a minor debate on the subject of gambling that ended with Teru shaking his head and saying, “I suppose you’re right.” Akira even found himself smiling slightly at times.

“Would you like the fairy tale or the truth?” Akira asked.

“Both,” Teru answered. His hair had the scent of vanilla and white _kiku_ flowers. His dark kimono made his skin look smoother. “I like stories.”

Akira hummed. Anyone who went to pray at the shrines knew the story, but anyone who disdained the shinto wouldn’t be caught praying. “There was a sohei warrior-monk who witnessed a family get torn to shreds by demons. He…” _how does it go again?_ “Prayed for a long time to the gods until he achieved enlightenment; they granted him the knowledge on how to slay demons, more so than the simple exorcisms that sohei perform now. Then the gods named him shōki— _demon-queller_ —and… hmm… commanded him to share his knowledge to the rest of Hyuga. Of course,” Akira added, “that’s the version without a shinto priest claiming that the first shōki _prayed_ to demons and was an arrogant warmonger.”

“And the truth?”

Akira smirked slightly. “A sohei discovered overseas that there were a thousand and one better ways to hunt _yokai_. He created the shōki when the rest of the sohei were too proud to accept that their exorcisms were largely inefficient.”

_Or reluctant to subject themselves to brutal mutations,_ Akira thought, but did not say.

The dining room with its tables and pillows once more opened before him; the lady named Mameha still wrote furiously at a corner. One stark difference, however, was the obvious feast that lay on top of one table.

Only Akira’s sense of dignity kept him from making a beeline for the food. He was careful to walk as slowly as Teru—damn if he was going to show that he was eager. Akira could smell the grilled crab in the air, the _nikujaga_ beef stew, the stirred scallops, the oysters, the fried shrimp, the _soba_ noodles—and on top of it all, the fragrant, crisp peach scent of _sake_. When the two of them finally sat opposite each other on the pillows, Akira saw that it looked as good as it smelled—lightly steaming and set on clean plates.

Akira looked at Teru. Saving the gambler might have been one of the few, extremely good decisions he made in his life.

“Dig in, my dear shōki,” Teru said, and Akira didn’t need any more instructions. He picked up the chopsticks and began wolfing down the food in the most dignified manner he could muster.

“Osamu cooks well, no?” Teru smiled. “Let me pour your sake for you.”

Akira paused and stared—pouring sake was the highest gesture of hospitality and subservience, a duty reserved for geisha or wives. Teru picked up the bottle with a fluid grace and maneuvered around the table; a portion of his wrist revealed itself as he poured the sweet-smelling drink.

Their legs touched through their kimonos, and Akira felt warmth that left too quickly.

Teru blushed. “Oh, I—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Akira said. As Teru began to move away, he added, “Just sit next to me.”

Teru nodded, and the pearly blush that remained on his cheeks was endearing. Akira found himself still hungry, but now it was not only for food.

“Eat,” Akira invited as he picked up a shrimp with his chopsticks. Then he noticed that Teru’s hands were nervously folding over and over in his lap. “What’s wrong?”

“…Is it true,” Teru began, nervously glancing into Akira’s eyes, “that sohei exorcisms are ineffective?”

He was so close that Akira could see the raggedness of his scar, the slight specks of gold and light brown in his dark eyes. “It’s true. It does nothing more than transfer a demon to another location. Why do you ask?”

Teru finally picked up his chopsticks and poked at a scallop. “So many sohei in town lately.”

Akira was immediately attentive. _‘A monster hunter like you might even find a job in the district.’_

“Why?” Akira asked.

“Don’t laugh at me when I say it.”

“I won’t.”

Teru looked at him. “They say that the goddess of Yoshiwara has come again, and is exacting justice upon evil-doers.”

Akira frowned as he chewed on a piece of beef. “What makes people say that?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this while you eat, Akira?”

“I can handle it.”

Teru bit his lip in an endearing gesture, and Akira would have become distracted if it were not for his next words.

“Every other day, a man is found dead,” Teru explained, finally eating a shrimp. “It’s been going on for quite some time. I’ve never seen it myself, but people say that these men are… shredded, at times, if not mutilated by what’s probably a knife.” Teru shook his head. “The shinto have been preaching lately that it’s a demon on the loose, but everyone else—well… the girls, anyway—say that it’s a goddess. _Maneki-neko_.”

Akira frowned. “Why?”

“Because it only kills men who were abusing the oiran they were visiting,” Teru answered, looking troubled. “Or so the story goes, anyway… I don’t quite believe it. And something nasty is always found by the goddess’s statue when the murders happen. I can hardly stomach passing by the square now.”

Akira drank another cup of sake, thoughtful. Teru dutifully refilled his cup. “You’re a shōki,” Teru said. “Are you… going to attempt to get rid of it?”

“Perhaps,” Akira replied. “If someone contracts me to.”

“Is it even possible to kill a goddess?” Teru asked, cocking his head. The curious gesture almost made Akira smile.

“You’d be surprised.” He already had experiences with demons pretending to be gods; it was always easier to obtain human flesh when you were a deity demanding for a sacrifice. As far as Akira was concerned, there were no gods—or at the very least, none of the benevolent, omnipotent, and invincible kind. “Almost anything can be killed, Teru.”

“Do you think you could face this… thing?” Teru asked as Akira drank. “It slashes everything!”

“Yes,” Akira replied honestly.

“Have you ever faced gods before?”

“I’ve faced plenty of things before, Teru. And I don’t think ‘Maneki-neko’ will stand out from the rest of them.” He ate another shrimp and looked at Teru curiously. “You seem very afraid of this thing. Thought you’d like the idea of a vigilante running around.”

Teru blinked, surprise and a slight blush coloring his features. “I just… don’t like the idea of someone I don’t trust exacting justice unchecked,” he said softly, biting his lip. “Maneki-neko can come after anyone she likes. Tomorrow it can be my sister. Tomorrow it can be me.”

Akira hid his slight smile behind his sake. _Smart._

“Shōki.”

Akira looked up at the sound of the elegant, feminine voice. The woman who had been writing profusely was now standing in front of their table. Everything that Mameha sported reflected the height of her status—the richly patterned and layered silk kimono, the large jade dove pinning her graying hair above her nape. But it wasn’t her clothing that Akira cared for—it was the expression on her face: the mixture of suspicion, slight disgust, reluctant acceptance, and slivers of need and hope that Akira had seen a hundred times on the faces of the problematic rich. It made him feel the burn of a potion in his throat and the clink of cold gold in his hands.

“What do you need?” Akira cut to the chase, anticipation thrumming in his fingertips.

If the lady had any issues with Akira’s brusque tone, she didn’t show it. “Is everything you told Teruhiko true?” Mameha asked. When Akira nodded, the sliver of hope on her lined face increased.

“Teruhiko already told you everything I am concerned about. I suppose you can understand that this… demon-goddess is bad for my enterprise and all the others stationed here.” Mameha made a refined gesture with her hands. “It’s simple enough, shōki. I want you to kill it.”

Akira drank his sake. The bright fizz of peach in his mouth could not compare to the brightness in his chest. He had to drink, or else he was going to embarrass himself in front of Teru by grinning like a man who won the lottery.

Mameha sat down opposite Akira, her eyes stern, careful, and slightly uncomfortable. As Teru filled Akira’s cup yet again, the lady leaned forward. “I have never done dealings with your kind before,” Mameha said, and Akira was too distracted to mind the words _your kind._ “You are the one who is supposed to set the price, correct?”

Akira nodded, and Mameha looked at him expectantly. The shōki pretended to thoughtfully consider, but in reality he was throwing a sideways glance at Mameha’s clothing, at the jade in her hair, and wondered just how desperate the demon had made the stoic woman become.

“A goddess is harder to kill than your average wet-woman,” Akira remarked, swirling the sake in his cup. “Its head will cost you eight ryō.”

He stared into the lady’s dark eyes, trying to detect any change in them—haughtiness, outrage, shock, unwillingness—but instead saw Mameha only nod and smile gently as if pleased.

_Damn it._

“I ought to hire shōki instead of samurai,” the lady remarked as she gracefully stood. “Will you require anything else? Funding for…what are they called…potions?”

Akira shook his head, the sake in his mouth becoming slightly sour at the sight of Mameha’s layered kimonos and the fact that the indigo he was wearing was only a gift. _I could have actually asked for more?_ He drank again as soon as Teru refilled the cup, trying to wash away the regret and self-consciousness with the taste of peaches.

“I have a special guest visiting at the end of the week,” Mameha said. “Kill the beast before then and I’ll throw in another half, shōki.”

“Understood,” Akira replied evenly. _Damn. No use regretting, now._ “I’ll begin the investigation tomorrow.”

Mameha disappeared behind a flowery wall, leaving Akira to his thoughts. The loss of potential revenue aside, the prospect of gaining hundreds of silver pieces before seven days’ end stoked Akira’s eagerness and made him feel a fiery emotion he hadn’t felt in weeks—energetic intent. Akira continued to eat with a renewed vigor, his mind already turning its gears to figure out where he should begin, what he first ought to look at, ought to observe.

“Shōki,” Teru said, his eyes wide and nervous. “Are you really going to try to kill a god?”

Akira drank the peach sake the young man served him, and gave Teru a small smile. “I won’t just try.”

* * *

**Lexicon:**

**_Yosei:_** an elf-like creature in Japanese folklore.

**_Ryō_** **:** the highest monetary unit in Pre-Meiji Japan; 1 ryō is equal to 4 _bu,_ 16 _shu,_ and 4,000 _mon_ respectively.

**_Sohei_** **:** the warrior-monks of Japan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may recognize Maneki-neko as the cute golden cat in shops, but its story is actually a lot darker than that.
> 
> The legend goes that a very famous and high-ranking prostitute in Yoshiwara loved a tortoiseshell cat dearly, and was an extreme cat lover. One day, as one of her samurai lovers was visiting, the cat acted strangely. It began yowling and clawing at the prostitute's dress. Thinking that the cat would scratch his lover, the samurai cuts the cat's head off.
> 
> The cat's head soars through the air and sinks its teeth into a snake that was hidden in her owner's bathroom. (More of the legend can be found here http://yokai.com/manekineko/)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it, and let me know what you think!


	3. The Goddess of Yoshiwara II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (just Edo-typical nuance, my guys. Ain't some yaoi bs)

Akira was already active before the sun rose.

The shōki walked through the streets, feeling much, much better than usual. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he actually managed to eat well and have a pleasant conversation last night, and capped it all off with a tipsy half-sleep inside a comfortable bedroom that, he hoped, did not cost Teru too much. Akira stirred awake that morning feeling more rested than he had in weeks, and dressed himself briskly in his clothes, jacket, and armor, all newly cleaned by the brothel’s Kondo servants. He had left the house without eating breakfast, meaning to see the statue of Maneki-neko before onlookers and sohei arrived.

The eastern horizon was only just starting to redden; a heavy dusk-like darkness still hung over the city as Yoshiwara began to wake. It had rained last night: the cobblestones were damp, puddles collecting here and there. Akira passed by a small number of sleepy men leaving the smaller brothels in the pleasure district, groggy but with pleasant expressions on their faces; as Akira walked along the cobbled path that led out of the beautifully arranged set of establishments, he began to pass by sailors, vendors, and fishermen. Each was already setting up their nets or stalls in preparation for the customers who would wake in the next few hours. The rain-scented air was slowly colored by the scent of fresh fish, sea salt, and street food preparation as Akira neared the marketplace. It could almost remind the shōki of home in Genfu.

But underneath the pleasant scents was something horrible and undeniable, and it was a scent that had never failed to make his younger self dizzy.

Now it only made Akira eager.

The iron tang of blood was an underlying stain in the atmosphere, becoming stronger as Akira walked towards what he supposed was the city center. He could see on the cobblestones the almost mist-like trails of blood that were at most a week old, invisible to the human eye but not to Akira’s mutated pupils. The trails solidified further with freshness, and the sparse people setting up their market stalls in the area seemed to become more troubled, more uneasy, their eyes flicking from side to side to linger on Akira suspiciously at either his two strange swords or the unusual sigils on his haori.

Eventually, the invisible trail of red turned into solid lines of blood—the visible kind. No more than a few hours old. The trail was all but washed by the previous night’s rain, but no amount of water could mask the acrid, sickly-sweet scent of a body. Akira’s eyes tracked the trail of red, and he saw it lead to a large, stone cat in the middle of the market square.

Akira neared. The statue was impressive—it was no larger than a dog, yet it was a beautiful and lifelike depiction of a cat bravely standing on its hind legs, a snake trapped in its large fangs. Perhaps on a better day the statue was a cool grey, but today, with the stench of blood metallic in the air, Maneki-neko’s hind legs were a fading red.

There was a body at the statue’s feet—or at least part of it. A torso was nestled between the cat’s paws; innards, organs, and bones trailed out from where the body was torn to form a strange god’s offering. The head was still attached—the face was unpleasant, with bloodshot eyes and rough-hewn features, the mouth open in a gaping _‘o’_ —and the arms were still present as well; but the hands were cut off, and the fingers were pinned and clamped down the man’s throat by chopsticks, tensely positioned as if to choke him to death.

There was red writing across the man’s chest; it was slightly faded from the rain, yet the message was still legible—

_Get out of my city._

Akira was far from fazed, but his lips twisted at the sight of unnecessary sadism.

Akira knelt on the cobblestones to inspect closer. Bite marks were the best indicators of demons’ identities, and knowing the demon’s nature was key to killing it. Akira gently used a finger to tilt the abdomen; the torso had been cut off by a large bite—the skin was tattered and ragged, cut uncleanly, but two telltale puncture wounds had torn straight through the kidneys. The same unclean bite was on the hands, if the mauled dragmarks were any indication. But the chopsticks…

Akira narrowed his eyes. The hands were pinned precisely, a razor-sharp point driven through each fingernail and knuckle and piercing into the throat. The handwriting was messy, but obviously made by fine, slim fingers.

_A shapeshifter, or a human with a tamed yokai?_ The list of possible creatures dwindled down in Akira’s head. _Where is the lower half of the victim?_

Akira continued to observe, noting to himself all the minor details—the obvious strength that was found in the fangs; the strange saliva-like coating on the man’s hair; the fruit, beads, rice, and milk offerings that lay all around Maneki-neko’s statue which were too many for the average minor goddess; the fact that there were so many bloodstains layered on the stones, the oldest he could smell dating to a month or more.

Then Akira heard the ring of holy bells, and his mouth twisted again.

The shōki heard the sohei approach—they were always indiscreet in the cities. Their tinkling enchanted bells which drove away demons as much as caused commoners to bow, and the hard tapping of their _inugami_ ’s stone claws as the creatures walked upon the cobblestones. That, and their peculiar scent of incense and lotus flowers.

Akira heard the tinkling bells stop behind him. “Shōki,” a man’s voice said.

“Sohei,” Akira replied. He supposed he had obtained as much information as he could get. He stood up and turned around, and came face-to-face with three sohei warriors—each of them was clad in their white hoods, red robes, and holding white staffs. But their true trademark to a shōki was their disgusted glares.

“What are you doing here?” the sohei in front of him asked. The other two walked forward in a blur of red and white, and began murmuring incantations over the corpse.

“None of your business,” Akira replied smoothly. The sohei’s handsome face was marred by fresh scars, and the inugami dog at his feet growled at Akira. Its Akita head was fluffy and orange, but the rest of the dog's body was hewn completely of stone like a statue. “Move aside.”

“We don’t need your investigations tainting this city, shōki,” the man said sternly, stepping into Akira’s space. “The sohei are solving it already.”

“Then why have these murders lasted for more than a month?”

The sohei glared at him. “Are you blind? Look at all these offerings. Many of the townspeople destroy every talisman and trap that we set up. They attack our dogs on patrol.”

“You must have tried tracking it.”

“We have.”

Akira smirked to himself. _You mean your dogs have_. He shoved past the sohei, meaning to follow the scent of blood that led away from the statue, but he was not able to gain a few more steps when the man gripped him hard by the shoulder.

“Stay out of this, mutant,” the sohei snarled. “This demon is mine.”

Akira raised a brow and looked him up and down, and finally found the symbol he was searching for—the single-striped belt at the sohei’s waist belied his lower rank, and his freshly scarred face described an injury that must have placed him inside the healing ward with his feelings of uselessness clawing at him constantly.

_Eager to prove yourself, I see._ Akira was spared having to shove the man away when one of his companions neared, carrying a bag of white that was slowly staining red. “We’re ready, Kohaku-san,” she said behind her white mask.

The sohei—Kohaku—glared at Akira one last time before turning sharply away. Akira walked away as well, following the freshest trail of bloody scent that he could sense. _The assailant obviously went somewhere else after it did its work_ , Akira thought, focusing on the mission—he needed something to distract himself from the teeth-gritting irritation sohei always gave him.

* * *

The scent of newly-spilled blood led the shōki to a dilapidated dojo.

It was a brown, broken-down thing on the farthest side of Yoshiwara, surrounded here and there by the sight of bamboo forests, shanties, and storage houses of a similar state. The sun had risen well into the sky, but the cold autumn air kept Akira’s jacket from being stifling. He had spotted several Kondo yosei and beggars peeking at him from the windows, but they always turned away at the sight of his twin swords.

All of the dojo’s entrances and doorways were plastered with slips of paper covered in the sohei’s trademark runes. Each rune seemed to speak of repulsion, paralysis, and entrapment. Akira knew that the dojo was still worth a look despite being gone through by the sohei. They were more used to sending out inugami and _koma-inu_ dogs to hunt for them, rather than tracking demons themselves. Their strict _ahimsa_ code prohibited them from using violence and weapons, and since tracking down a demon themselves meant outright confrontation in its natural habitat, it repulsed the sohei. Murder was a tactic for men of the earth, and not for those of heaven.

Akira walked into the dojo. The layer of dust on the floor was unfortunately disturbed by the feet of the sohei and the large paws of their dogs, and the shōki spied no other foot prints that would tell him anything. The bloody scent led him further past rotting tatami floors and broken walls, and Akira realized that the dojo was slowly being filled more and more by the strong scent of sweet musk and kiku flowers.

Akira paused in the middle of what was likely once the training room, and blinked.

The bloody scent was completely gone.

Akira frowned. The fragrance was so intense, it was almost cloying. He was in a room with solid wooden walls, the carpet curling with moisture—and he saw the large shapes depressed into the matting made by inugami footprints; the dogs had likely circled around the room, confused at the sudden evaporation of the trail. There were large holes in the ceiling that filtered in sunlight—perhaps it was a _yonaki tsubaki_ that filled the room with fragrance, then jumped out? It was a conclusion viable for the sohei to make.

But Akira was no sohei, and his tracking was much better than their dogs.

Akira began walking around the room. He trained his ears for sounds that would betray hollowness; he knocked gently on the wooden walls, made his steps heavier, and he was halfway through circling the entire room when he heard a telltale _‘tak-tak’_ beneath his knuckles.

Akira smiled to himself and looked at the wall. His fingertips touched at the wood, and he felt a slit; the shōki dug his fingernails in and heard the panels creak, and he gently slid off the fake wooden panel, careful to not break a piece.

The panel revealed a compartment no taller than a cabinet, though wider in width. It was dark, but Akira dilated his pupils—the first thing he noticed was the intense, intense aroma of kiku flowers—so sweet that he almost gagged—and the second was the glint of a metal vat.

A green-colored vat large enough to bathe an inugami lay at the center of the compartment. When Akira lifted the cover, the smell intensified, and the shōki saw the glint of light off perfumed oil. _This beast is smart,_ Akira thought. It masked its scent from the inugami by washing itself in the most common perfume in Hyuga—Akira had smelled this often, his sharp nose catching kiku flowers off of geisha and minstrels in inns, and even smelled it off of Teru last night. He noted the name painted on the jar— _Boruja_.

_Smart,_ Akira thought. _But not smart enough._

He reached for the leather pouch at his side and withdrew a flask full of concentrated cinnamon oil. He opened the flask and already the spicy-sweet scent overpowered the nauseating flowers. Akira dripped several drops into the vat; he did not need to change the scent of the oil too much—just enough for the shōki’s sense of smell be able to distinguish the demon from the crowd. With how expensive the oil was, no common citizen would ever smell like it.

_If I don’t catch you before you kill someone new, I will catch you after._

After he was done, Akira covered the vat and returned the fake panel to the wall, cautious to leave everything looking as it was before.

* * *

Talking was always the hardest part of the contracts.

Akira greatly preferred it when common folk would point him in the general direction of a monster, gave him its appearance, and gave him his rightful payment afterwards. But he supposed that a contract potentially worth even more than eight ryō needed a little more effort on his part.

Whatever respect that folk gave him at the sight of his black haori evaporated the moment they saw his golden eyes and strange twin swords. Akira had first tried questioning the more friendly-looking folk in the city—meaning those who looked at him with less disgust than usual—but always received nothing more than _“I don’t know anything about that, shōki-san”_ and _“We don’t want to get into trouble, shōki-san.”_ It was just a couple of hours past noon, and surprisingly, the first person to give Akira any substantial information was a guard.

It was a young man and an obvious rookie. He was looking at Akira with shining eyes, standing at attention with his shoulders straight—a habit that would eventually be broken out of him after a few more months of service and the realization that he was being paid too little. “Good day, samurai-san,” the young guard said, his eyes turning slightly nervous—but still more or less good-natured—at the sight of Akira’s eyes. “May I help you with something? You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

_Would that all city guards were like you_. His helpfulness was another thing that would disappear before summer’s arrival. “I’m not,” Akira assented. “I’m a shōki. I was hired to investigate the murders happening in the city.”

“A shō…? Oh.” The young guard blinked and sheepishly rubbed the back of his nape. “Well, I’ve not much to tell you, samu—shōki-san. I’m new to the service. Only been around for six months.”

“That’s long enough,” Akira stated. “Have you happened to see or hear anything strange in that time?” When the young guard shook his head, Akira pressed further, “For how long have the murders been lasting?”

The man scratched his chin. He was trying to grow a beard, but it only came about in awkward patches. “Well… there was this incident by the fishing corner of the city about the time I was posted… a group of thugs were found. It was really ugly,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Body parts everywhere. Didn’t look like the work of a human, if that helps you. But this fiasco with Maneki-neko? Only been around for three or four months, I think. Only intensified lately.”

Akira nodded. Whatever this thing was, it was probably young—and if it were, that would make things easier when the time for his sword came.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” the guard asked.

“Do you know the name _Boruja?_ ”

The guard indeed knew who Boruja was—as did anyone else in the city. It was the name that belonged to the most popular perfume maker and alcohol seller in Yoshiwara, famous for a new invention of his: a strange sake made from dried grapes and plums instead of rice.

Akira now stood in front of the establishment; it was a beautiful shop, and the late afternoon sun colored it with a shade of gold. The scent of alcohol and perfume mingled in the air, reminiscent of the scent of his dinner with Teru the previous night; it made his stomach painfully more aware that he had not eaten anything for the day except for a single piece of fruit he bought during his trials of communication earlier.

Another dinner with Teru was something he was looking forward to.

Akira slipped through the fabric doors of the shop. Numerous bottles were on display—all of them corked or covered, but their scents still spilling out like overripe fruits in a plantation. A small, portly, middle-aged man with a horrendous moustache—presumably Boruja—busily wiped his already-clean counter, and he looked up brightly at the sound of Akira entering.

His eyes shone at the sight of Akira and his haori. “Well met, samurai-san! May I help you? I’m about to close up shop, but you can be my last customer for the day.” He raised a small bottle. “A perfume for your wife, perhaps? Or would you like to try my latest invention— _kajitsu-sake?_ ”

“I’m not here to buy anything,” Akira said, approaching. The brightness in Boruja’s eyes dimmed when Akira’s golden eyes became obvious. “I have some questions to ask.”

“Uh…” Boruja stepped back, glancing at Akira’s strange swords. “About… what, exactly?”

“About Maneki-neko,” Akira answered, and Boruja’s eyes widened. “I’ve been contracted to investigate the murders.”

“Contracted…” Boruja’s lips thinned. “You’re a shōki, aren’t you? Good gods,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about her, shōki. Now get out of here if you’re not going to buy anything.”

“There was a dead body by the goddess’s statue this morning. I tracked the trail of blood—the sohei likely did the same thing months ago—and it led to an abandoned house out of town.” Akira neared the counter and placed his gauntleted hand on it.

“Do you know what I found there?” the shōki asked. He had been trying for diplomacy for too long now with the city’s disdainful residents; it was high time to switch tactics. “I found a vat full of kiku perfume with your name on it. As it were, you’re anyone’s biggest lead. You’re lucky the sohei didn’t discover it.”

“W-well, I had nothing to do with that!” Boruja cried. “I don’t know anything about Maneki…”

Boruja’s eyes shifted, a different stroke of fearful in them. Akira knew the sign of a liar when he saw one.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Look,” Boruja snapped, pointing a finger right at Akira. The ever-familiar mix of spite and disgust twisted his face. “People buy my perfumes all the time! The brothels around here always send their errand boys to make their whores fragrant. I can hardly keep track of them all! A-and it’s not my responsibility to!”

_But you still look like a liar._ Akira leaned forward.

“If I were to tell the sohei,” The shōki growled slowly, narrowing his golden eyes, “that the reason their dogs’ trail went cold was a large perfumed vat with your name on it, do you realize what they would do to you?”

Boruja gulped.

“Groups of them will come here and question you endlessly,” Akira answered for him. “They’ll go through all your records, your inventories, and their dogs will be sniffing at your shop for a week. I can’t imagine that that’ll be very good for business. Or for your person.”

Boruja bit his lip.

“That’s what they’ll do,” Akira said pointedly. “Unless you tell me what you’re not telling me.”

“Well—well…“ Boruja broke off in a huff. “Alright! Please, just don’t tell the sohei… I’ve been following the story of this ‘goddess’ for a while now. I have a poet friend in another city, Bashō, and I owe him favors… he wants to write a story about Yoshiwara, you see, and he’s made me find out everything about this goddess...”

“Tell me,” Akira encouraged.

“Well…” Boruja sighed again. “Look, it’s what every man can tell you. Every other day, someone just winds up shredded and plastered against somewhere, and bits of him or her are on the statue.”

The shōki blinked. “There are female victims?”

“…one,” the vendor said, cringing slightly. “There was this owner of a small brothel… she was caning a girl when the lass was reluctant to do what she was bought for. Next day, guards found the lady torn in half and staked with her own cane.”

Akira’s fingers tapped on the counter. “Does Maneki-neko only kill people who abuse prostitutes?”

“Not quite,” Boruja said. “There was also a man… raped a fisherman’s daughter somewhere by the shipyard, or so she claimed, after the guards found the body. They found the bastard strung on a pole with his genitals in his mouth. Maneki-neko always kills abusers, criminals, what have you.”

_No wonder the townspeople tore up all the sohei’s traps._ “Are the victims killed only after they’ve done their crime?”

Boruja scratched his chin. “Most of the time. Such as the man who died this morning—did you see the body?—I heard he choked an oiran to death. Sick tastes, some people,” the man looked nauseated. “It looks like he got the same punishment.”

Akira remembered the hands on the victim’s throat, the poised position. “Do you know what this goddess looks like?” the shōki asked. It was the most important question.

“Of course not!” Boruja exclaimed. “Do you think I’d be so much of a brute to incur its wrath?! I’m an honest man, I’ll have you know.”

“Right. But I still need to know what it looks like.”

“I’ve never seen it,” Boruja grumbled. “But… there are rumors. Some say it’s a _kitsune_ —

_A shape-shifting fox spirit is possible_.

“Or a rogue inugami—“

_Nonsense._

“And still others say it’s a _bakeneko._ I heard this old man yapping about seeing a large, two-tailed cat on his roof, but… if you want someone who’s actually seen it…”

Akira cocked his brow.

“There’s this oiran who prays at the statue from sunset till midnight, without fail. She… she’s insane,” Boruja said regrettably. “But she’s the only person to have seen Maneki-neko. Or so people say.”

“How?”

Boruja rubbed the back of his nape. He looked even more nauseated. “Two months back… There was a jealous merchant who wanted to buy her from her house and keep her all to himself. She refused, though—I suppose she didn’t want to trade her gilded cage for a stone one. Then he had an insane fit of jealousy. You know these rich types,” Boruja said, hate trickling into his voice. “When they don’t get what they want with money, they do it through force.”

_He’s had bad experience with the rich,_ Akira noticed _._ But he wasn’t here to ask about his sob story. “Go on,” he told the shopkeeper.

“That merchant tossed boiling oil onto her skin, and yelled about how he was going to cut her heart out for breaking his. She started screaming for Maneki-neko to come save her, and…” Boruja sighed. “Well, she did. The goddess came in and burned him alive in blue fire, from what I’ve heard. The sight of it must have driven the poor girl insane. Now you’ll find her near the statue every night, and all she ever talks about is blue fire and how beautiful her goddess is, but she refuses to answer when other questions are posed. No man dares buy her anymore, but her owner is too scared of Maneki-neko to throw her out. “

“She goes to the statue by sunset, you said?” It was autumn, and the light outside the curtain doors now started to dim.

“Yes,” Boruja answered. “But look, shōki… have mercy on this poor girl. The sohei learned that the hard way. They tried to drag her to their castle to put spells on her, and she screamed so horribly that practically half the city descended on the holy men. Captain Kohaku was injured and demoted for his harshness.”

_Ah,_ Akira thought. That explained the unique personal hatred he had seen on the scarred sohei’s face. “I see.”

“People love this goddess, shōki,” Boruja told him, returning to wiping his counter. “Even though they don’t want to admit that, even though they’re scared of her and don’t understand her, they do. Because by any indication, she’s on the side of those who need protection most. So don’t speak to this woman the same way you spoke to me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

* * *

The autumn sun was setting.

Just as Boruja had promised, Akira heard the insane lady come as he was leaning against a wall.

He heard her footfalls first—the distinct heavy slide of her large oiran’s shoes—then the singing of a religious song for blessings onto Maneki-neko’s name, warbled and frantic; it was accompanied by the sounds of clapping and the tinkling of a small bell. Akira watched her approach the statue, spinning, laughing, singing, and she finally prostrated before the stone cat, pressing her head against the cobblestones where just hours ago half of a man’s body had been garishly displayed. She began saying prayers, loudly enough for Akira to catch the words.

_Some goddess,_ Akira thought, nearing. _Did the demon not care for this woman’s psyche at all? It must be either impulsive or uncaring._

Akira knelt next to the woman, so as not to frighten her—but she never noticed the sound of his feet or his swords. Her hair was ragged, her kimono un-layered; she looked nothing like the perfumed oiran she must have been.

“Excuse me,” Akira said, and she turned her face towards him.

Akira had seen worse—much worse—and it was only this that kept him from grimacing. Her face must have been beautiful once—she had a lovely, pointed chin, and expressive eyes, but everything else was now marred by dark, patchy scars that twisted and deformed her nose, cheeks, and lips, all of which were painted with makeup as if in a kabuki parody.

Akira thought that she would be frightened of him—but he could not have been more wrong. The lady gasped, then smiled brightly, widely, _wildly,_ and her eyes shone with tears.

“Maneki-kami!” she cried out, covering her mouth with her hands. Her tears started to fall, and Akira never felt more confused in his life. “Maneki-kami—your eyes—is this another of your forms? Oh, kami-sama—“

She lunged forward as if to kiss him, and Akira nearly stumbled in backing away from her. “No,” Akira began, “I’m—“

“I’m sorry!” the woman screamed, her tears flowing faster. She bowed her head to the ground, right in front of Akira’s dust-ridden sandals. “Forgive me, kami-sama!”

Akira knew that pretending to be her god could bring him information he would never get otherwise, but—his stomach churned at the sight of her kneeling in front of him, at the sound of her sobs and her hair in the dirty street. _This wasn’t part of my plan anyway_.

Akira held her gently by the shoulder. “I’m not who you think I am,” he said carefully, not wanting her sobs to increase. “I’m not your goddess. I’m just…” he realized that telling her he was a shōki would be unwise. “…a man. My name is Akira.”

The insane woman straightened, her curious, vibrant eyes boring into his. Then she turned away from him, facing the statue once more with a look nothing less than adoring. “You probably want to ask me questions about the beautiful one,” the lady said, her words slurring slightly. “But I won’t answer you. She does not will it.”

“Please,” Akira said, in the most placating tone he could muster. “I need to know some things about her. I need to find Maneki-neko. She’s… she’s in danger.”

The woman turned to look at him again, her eyes wide. Her tears had carved troughs through her white makeup. Then she giggled. “My goddess can never be in danger,” she said, smiling. “She’ll burn them all, the beautiful one will.”

“The sohei are looking for her.”

“And you’re looking for her too, aren’t you?” The woman’s voice turned very, very cold. “I see your swords. You’re a man. If you found Maneki-sama, you will only try to kill her.” Her voice wobbled. “You’ll take her away from me.”

“Your goddess has committed many crimes,” Akira said. “Many are hunting her down, but I only want to—“

“Crimes?!” The woman snapped. _“Crimes?!_ You call defending the women of Yoshiwara a crime? You call saving _me_ a crime?!”

Her hands had gripped one of the chopsticks sticking out of a rice offering, and her teeth were bared in an angry, animal-like snarl. “Go away!” the woman yelled. “Don’t defile this place!”

“I’m sorry,” Akira muttered gently—then he stretched out his hand and swiftly drew the sign of _Akusi_ in front of the lady’s eyes.

“You saw what Maneki-neko looks like,” Akira said gravely as the lady’s face went slack. “Tell me.”

Her hands calmly released her grip on the chopstick. “She looks…she looks…“ her eyes glazed over, and a blissful smile appeared on her face. “Beautiful… she looked like a black cat, but was as large as a majestic tiger… her tail splits in two—seen anything like so? But she’s even lovelier in human form.”

_A bakeneko. Boruja’s old man was right._ “Tell me what she looks like as a human.”

The lady shook her head, looking lost and in love. “Such long, beautiful hair covers her—she visited me once, when I was healing from my wounds, and her eyes are just like… like yours…”

The lady broke off, her jaw dropping open. “What…” tears started to track down her white makeup once more, but this time there was no look of bliss on her disfigured features. “What did I…”

_Her mind is stronger than I expected,_ Akira thought, grimacing.

“What did you do to me?!” The woman screamed, her eyes bulging. “What did you make me do?! No! _No!”_

“I’m sorry,” Akira said again, standing up. He did his best to ignore the woman’s despairing sobs as he walked away. She screamed her goddess’s name, over and over, her pleas for forgiveness ringing across the town square, jarring into Akira’s ears like an accusation.

* * *

Akira only managed to rid his ears of the screaming when he reached the pleasure district and saw, once more, the beautifully painted buildings. It was not yet late in the night, and there was no oncoming storm, and thus the streets were filled with rich patrons in palanquins, curious onlookers, and more than a few drunks. A young man passed Akira by, but not before gazing at him with a meaningful look in his eyes.

Akira gently shook his head and continued walking. He was too hungry and had too many things on his mind—how to track the bakeneko, the potions needed to compete with the speed and strength even he could not match, and…

And the young man’s hair was too short, his face too plain, his eyes too round compared to the man Akira wanted to see.

Akira entered _The Forest_ with a spring in his step and a bright emotion that he was struggling to quell. _Quit being stupid_ , Akira scolded himself as he turned towards the dining room. _Teru might not even be here—_

Teru was there.

The dining room was filled with patrons and music. Teru was seated, dressed in a lovely rose-colored kimono with his long hair draped over one shoulder. But whatever brightness Akira felt in his chest was replaced by a confusion— _coldness—_ when he saw that Teru was seated next to a lovely oiran. He was leaning close to her, his expression indignant, playful… and undeniably loving. The oiran noticed Akira before Teru did, and leaned to whisper something in the young man’s ear.

Teru looked towards the doorway, surprised. Then the playfulness on his face evaporated into relief. “Shōki!” Teru said, standing up and approaching Akira. “I was waiting for you. I heard about the statue.” The brows above his bright eyes furrowed. “I was so worried that—“

The oiran coughed audibly.

Teru pressed a hand to his forehead. “Ah, where are my manners…” He touched Akira’s arm in that ever gentle manner of his. “Akira, this is my sister, Keiko.”

Akira suddenly felt very stupid.

“…Pleased to meet you,” He managed to say as Teru drew him towards the table, trying not to feel embarrassed over his stirrings of jealousy just moments ago.

The oiran bowed, the ornaments in her hair sparkling. “Likewise, shōki.” When she straightened her back, her almond-shaped eyes twinkled. “I now see why my brother does not stop talking about you.”

“Onee-san!” Teru cried, blushing. Akira smiled slightly.

As the two of them sat down, the smiling Keiko stood up. Now Akira could hardly believe that she and Teru were anything but siblings—they had the same fluid grace, the same playful eyes, and the same cat-like smiles. Despite the title of older sister, she did not look different from him in age—but it was difficult to glean the truth of Keiko’s features with her white makeup and red eyeliner.

“I’ll be going to bed now, Teru-kun.” Keiko’s voice was high and pleasant, like the tinkling of a wind-chime. “Shōki-san, please do not keep my brother up so late again. He does have to wake up very early.”

“Onee-san,” Teru grumbled. “Just go.”

She turned to leave—but not before giving Teru an extremely pointed and serious look. Akira never had the chance to wonder what it meant, however, when Teru took all of his attention by sliding closer to him and laying a hand on his wrist.

“I ordered dinner for us already,” Teru told him. “It should be here any moment.”

“Thank you, Teru, but you—”

“Don’t have to?” Teru finished, lightly swatting Akira’s arm. It felt more like a caress. “I think I do have to. You had no breakfast from what I’ve heard, you saved my life, and I want to eat dinner with you besides. I’ve never met someone like you before.”

“I can imagine. There aren’t exactly many shōki.”

Teru laughed. “Akira, that’s hardly what I meant…” he leaned forward and charmingly propped his head up on his hand. “Tell me, what adventures did you have today?”

Akira looked around at the residents dining within earshot of them. “I don’t think it’s wise to tell you, Teru. Not with all these people around, that is.”

“Is that so?” Teru asked, and he stood up. “Then let’s go to my room.”

Akira blinked. He had only used the presence of patrons as an excuse to keep the investigation under wraps—and this was the last response he expected.

Teru smiled and lay a graceful hand on Akira’s shoulder. “I’m not planning to molest you—I’m just curious, my dear shōki. And I must admit that having you all to myself is… well, I like the idea of it.”

Akira felt the slow circling of Teru’s thumb through the dark material of his haori. The man’s face was so gentle, so inviting, and so pretty that Akira found himself unable to do anything but nod and stand from the table. Teru’s hand was on his arm, gently flitting like a dove.

And soon Akira found himself in the hushed, private area of Teru’s room. The young man lit small candles to shed soft, ember-like light on the plain blue matting, on the white futon with a neatly folded blanket, on the black cabinets and small rosewood table in the center of the room that had a kitsune _kabuki_ mask dangling off it. The room smelled of kiku flowers and vanilla, and Akira settled onto the small cushions before the table feeling that following Teru to his room was another of his recent good decisions.

“You can remove your swords and armor, shōki. A servant will bring us our food.” Teru was rummaging through something that sounded like porcelain from the inside of his cabinets. His back was turned, and the candlelight stained the black of his long hair with lines of gold. Akira looked at his figure for a moment, fascinated by how his obi sash caught on the right lines of his waist. Then he looked down at the kitsune mask on the table.

“You enjoy the theatre?” Akira asked.

“I like stories,” Teru answered. He sat down next to Akira—closer than he had the previous night—and lay a porcelain bottle onto the table along with two rose-colored cups. “Would you now grace me with your stories from today, dear shōki?”

“I can’t exactly tell you everything I discovered, Teru.” The smell of sweet and tangy strawberries wafted to Akira’s nose as Teru poured sake gracefully into the cups.

“I know, shōki. But specifics aren’t exactly what I’m after.”

“And what are you after?”

Teru smiled, offering Akira a cup. The shōki took it and their fingers brushed.

“The investigation for the day went well, Teru. I learned a lot,” Akira stated, sipping the sake—his eyes fluttered shut at the sweet-sour taste; it was fine, finer than anything he had ever tasted, and Akira stared at Teru in surprise.

“Like it?” Teru said, looking pleased with himself. “I normally save this for myself, but for you I’ll make an exception.”

“You like my stories this much, Teru?”

“I like _you_ this much,” Teru retorted, pouting.

Akira chuckled. He did his best to appear in control of himself, but in reality his heart had irrationally, stupidly, started beating faster. “Fair enough… I ought to pay you back for the sake. But ask about me, Teru, not my investigation.” Akira relaxed and leaned onto the table. “I don’t want to spoil the evening with serious talk.”

“Hmmmm.” Teru drank, his pale throat white under the candlelight as he did. “How is it that you manage to catch what is uncatchable, shōki?”

_“Yokai_ are not so uncatchable, Teru.” Akira sipped from his cup as soon as Teru refilled it, the fragrance of his hair surrounding Akira. “I can track them by the methods that any person follows anything else. Bloodstains, scents. My senses are simply much sharper than an average person’s, so I notice what most others do not.”

Teru’s eyes were curious. “Did anything ever give you a lot of trouble?”

Akira studied Teru’s hands as the man poured more sake; his wrists were slim, his fingers graceful, and Akira wondered how the dove-like hands would feel like on his bare skin. “Each demon has its own trouble, but if you’re asking me about what was most difficult…” He thought for a moment. “There was once a _tengu_ in Shima, and a kitsune in Tonogasha. Those were difficult.”

Teru clapped a hand over his mouth. “Kitsune? _Tonogasha?_ The art capital with the largest theater in all of Hyuga?”

Akira could not help but smile at Teru’s obvious passion. “Yes. The kitsune was especially difficult to track—it shape-shifted into one of the actors. It gave me a suddenly easy time of hunting it down when it chose me to be a participant in one of the acts.” Akira rubbed his chin, remembering the screams from the audience when he ran his silver sword through the kitsune in a highly unscripted manner. The owner of the theater had banned him from entering ever since, but Akira never particularly cared for theater anyway.

“What did the theater look like?”

“If I remember correctly, there were two large golden fans decorating the entrance, and the ushers gave me a mask. I think giving the audience masks is another of their trademarks?”

“It is. What I’d give to watch a play there…” Teru sighed. “What other great things have you seen on your travels, shōki?”

Akira drank the expensive liquor, and told him.

He was not an eloquent man, but he did as best as he could to paint for Teru the most brilliant things he had seen over his years of wandering Hyuga—the sand dunes in the western Kondo lands, sparkling in the sun like golden sheets; the pristine whiteness of Mount Fuyu which _yuki-onna_ loved to terrorize; the sparkling ponds of Tatara Forest where he had lain a cursed boar to rest. Teru listened to him with an enraptured, attentive look on his face, his eyes widening ever so slightly like a child whenever Akira mentioned to him what dragons and spider-women looked like. He only ever looked away when he refilled Akira’s sake and when he went to receive their ordered dinner from Osamu. Akira wove for him images of luminous caves and beautiful temples, and he could not help but feel like he was in the stereotypical shoes of a suitor.

“How beautiful,” Teru whispered. “Would you ever take me to one of those places, if I asked?”

“Maybe,” Akira said, and he smiled and told Teru more.

Akira was not sure what was making him feel so relaxed and comfortable—perhaps it was Teru’s gentle features and amazed eyes, or the pristine and strong sake that he was letting Akira have despite its hefty price, or both; he found himself sitting down more comfortably, smiling more than he probably had in the past _year_ as Teru repaid Akira’s stories with interesting anecdotes from his work and his gambling dens. Eventually, the shōki could not even keep himself from barking a short laugh when Teru told him the tale of a drunken brawl he once participated in. The image of a man as slight as Teru putting down two men armed with sticks was simply too ridiculous, despite a pouting Teru pressing that it was true and that he ought to stop laughing.

With how their food was finished, and with how Akira was beginning to feel the familiar light-headedness of deeper intoxication and his natural southern accent that came with it, he knew that they must have been speaking for a good few hours. Yet Akira still felt like it could not last long enough, and he could not find it in himself to leave Teru despite what Keiko had asked of him. Teru looked at him in a way that was just shy of adoration, and Akira, however selfish it was, did not want him to stop.

He had not felt this way with anyone in months. Maybe even years.

The sake heated up Akira’s body too much to be comfortable, and he shed off his haori and unlaced his gauntlets, laying both as neatly as he could on his lap. He opened his mouth to grace Teru’s eyes with a compliment, but the words died on his lips when he saw those eyes staring down at the newly bared skin at the back of Akira’s hands.

Akira knew what he must be seeing—scars upon scars glinting silver underneath the candlelight, all obtained from training or from beasts that were too strong for his runed leather. Akira smirked at Teru’s obvious attention. “Ya like ‘em, no?”

Teru placed a hand on his wrist, slowly pulling up the sleeve of Akira’s dark green kimono. “Yes.” Teru’s lashes were lowered, and his fingertips were brushing heat into Akira’s bare skin. “If you don’t mind my asking…Where did you get this?”

“A kappa,” Akira answered. Teru’s fingers were wandering lightly, touching almost teasingly, and it made heat collect and simmer in the shōki’s veins.

“And this one?”

“Ayakashi.”

Teru continued to touch Akira as if he were a curious piece of artwork, his head bowed, the vulnerable skin of his nape bared. It was not the first time that Akira’s scars attracted attention from a pretty man, but it was definitely the first time someone touched them with fingertips as lightly and curiously as Teru did. His fingers were now tracing the veins of Akira’s wrist, his other hand turning Akira’s left palm over.

Teru’s index ghosted over the scar on Akira’s left hand. “And this?” Teru asked softly, looking up at him.

“A human,” Akira murmured. Teru’s fingertips stroked that area lightly, and Akira felt a stirring sensation not unlike the time he had seen the shadow of Teru’s naked body behind a bath screen. The man’s lips were shiny under the candlelight, reflecting gold; he was close enough to kiss. The sweet smell of his hair was so soothing, and Akira wondered what those long locks would feel like in his hands, and whether the rest of Teru’s body also carried the same lovely scent.

Teru looked down again, cradling Akira’s left hand carefully and almost lovingly. The gesture made something twist and beat faster in Akira’s chest. “A shōki’s life is so rough,” Teru commented, his voice still hushed. “You didn’t even have a horse when I first met you.”

Akira snorted. “Horses are stupid an’ prone to fear. I’m not overtly fond of handling ‘em.”

“Companions, then. You had none either. Don’t tell me… you don’t have anyone with you at all?”

Teru continued to touch his hand, and Akira was becoming increasingly distracted. “No,” Akira answered, finally remembering that he had to speak and not only look at the pale skin bared at the collar of Teru’s kimono. “Not really many want to tag along.”

“You’re always alone?” Teru asked, looking up at him. His eyes were wide with shock, but heavy with sadness.

“All shōki are, Teru.”

“Oh…” Teru blinked multiple times, and Akira realized that the young man actually had tears in his eyes.

“Teru,” Akira said, alerted, and he brushed the man’s fringes away. He saw Teru’s face clearly for once—the harsh line of the silver scar running down beneath his left eye, the beautifully hewn shape of his cheekbones and nose. “Teru, don’ look so sad. ’S not that bad. I’m free.”

All things considered, Akira supposed he was lucky. As hard as his life was, as much as he spent most of his days starving, walking the Path alone, and fighting for his life, he was still free. He would never be locked up into a monotonous life like most men—instead of handling a fishing net every single day in Genfu or being forced to slave for some sailing captain, Akira handled his swords, and executed the purpose which he was made for. He was free to do whatever he wished and go wherever he pleased.

Akira supposed that isolation was a fair enough price to pay in order to follow no one’s orders but his own. He had never needed anyone in his life, anyway.

“I know you’re strong enough to handle it,” Teru replied. “But still. I don’t like the thought of you having to go through all this,” he stroked the scar on Akira’s hand, “alone.”

Teru glanced up at Akira’s face, his dark eyes tracing the shōki’s features as if searching for something. His eyes were as soft and careful as his voice. “How long has it been since you’ve kissed someone, Akira? Since you’ve had someone?”

Akira couldn’t help it—he grinned. “Why’re ye askin’?”

Teru blushed. “Don’t misunderstand me! I just want to be a good host.”

Akira was _very_ aware of the slim hands cradling his. “An’ what’ll meh good host do when I tell him I haven’ had anyone for a while now?”

“Then he shall obtain someone for you for the night,” Teru stated, a determined look in his features.

Akira cocked his head. “…Someone?”

“You can take your pick, and I’ll pay for her,” Teru said, and disappointment sank into Akira’s chest. “Any woman. I’d say you deserve it, what with you defending so many people from monsters.”

_He’s touching me like this, and proposes I go to bed with someone else?_ Akira sighed. “I don’ want a wom’n, Teru.”

Teru blinked. “A—a man, then?”

Akira smirked. He knew this type of man well enough. The kind that would flirt and flirt, yet suddenly pretend to be innocent and coy at the last moment—all without moving away. Akira knew that this type gave these mixed signals for one reason and one reason only: they wanted to be chased, and they wanted to hear that they were desired.

Akira moved his hands, his fingers going for the sensitive skin at the beating pulse of Teru’s wrist. He leaned a little closer, and smelled strawberries off Teru’s lips and flowers off his hair.

“I don’ want an oiran, Teru,” Akira said, his voice deep with intent. “I want you.”

“Oh, I—“ Teru blushed, and he quickly drew his hands away, folding them in his lap and averting his eyes. Akira cocked his head, blinking—the man looked genuinely flustered, and he was biting his lip, and his hands were fluttering nervously.

_Don’t tell me he’s actually…_

“I—ah—“ Teru covered his mouth with his hand and laughed shakily. “I’ve only known you for two days, Akira!”

Akira’s head swam, and he stared. This was the last thing he expected to hear from a man working in a brothel. He carefully schooled his eyes away from Teru’s bare neck and instead looked at his face, his tension, the trembling in his fingertips. Teru looked… flustered, overwhelmed, and—

Afraid.

The sensation of disbelief in Akira was replaced, suddenly, by repentance.

Akira inched himself away from Teru respectfully, meaning to give the man space. He made a mental note to himself to exercise more care when drinking alone with a beautiful man. _I can’t believe I lost control like that…_

Akira finally was a good two feet away from the blushing Teru. Then, as the man eyed him quizzically, Akira bowed his head. It took him less than his ten fingers to count how many times he had done this in his life.

“I'm sorry, Teru,” Akira said seriously, shame slowly trickling into his gut. The man had been nothing but kind to him, and…

“I hope you don't think that I consider you... easy,” Akira continued, his eyes trained on the tatami mat. It was a pain to curb his drunkenness and his natural southern accent, but he had to. Wanted to. “You’re a man of good character. You have more kindness and decency than most, and I respect you. I never mean to make you feel otherwise in my company.”

“Shōki,” he heard Teru whisper. His voice sounded different. “You shouldn’t think so highly of me.” After a beat, he stammered, “A-and you don’t have to apologize. Akira, please, raise your head.”

Akira did so, and he saw Teru look more or less collected but with the blush on his face an even deeper shade. Then, Teru smiled. “I suppose the both of us just had too much of that sake.”

“Yes,” Akira agreed, returning the smile. “I’ll be going now, Teru. I’ve been keeping you from resting.”

Akira stood up from the floor and turned away, his haori and gauntlets lain on his arm. Surprisingly, he felt no disappointment—only relief that Teru hadn’t slapped his face and started looking at him like he was a pervert.

Perhaps he would have another chance.

“Good night, Teru,” Akira said, laying his hand on Teru’s sliding door.

“Wait, Akira.”

Akira turned around curiously and saw Teru approach. He looked more like the confident man he was moments ago, swaggering slightly as he did that first night they met. After a moment’s hesitation, Teru lay a hand on Akira’s arm. Akira found that he was becoming fonder and fonder of the gesture.

“Maybe… maybe after a few more days,” Teru said quietly.

Then he leaned in close and kissed Akira’s cheek.

Akira’s eyes shut at the soft, gentle touch, and it was only his slivers of self-restraint that kept him from grabbing Teru by the shoulders and taking more than just a kiss on the cheek. His heart was beating prey fast, and it only beat faster when Teru looked up at him with warm eyes and a coy smile that held a promise.

He would have another chance after all.

“Sleep well tonight,” Teru whispered.

“Shall I see you tomorrow?” Akira asked.

“Of course.”

Akira left Teru’s room feeling very, very light. His clothing and hair had caught the smell of the man’s strawberries and flowers, and it was this smell that accompanied Akira even after he had removed his armor and settled beneath his warm futon.

Akira went to sleep that night even better than yesterday, the candlelit image of long, fragrant locks and gentle hands lulling him to peacefulness.

Somewhere in the distance, a body fell off Yoshiwara Bridge.

* * *

**Lexicon:**

**_Inugami_** : a magical dog-thrall made through a cruel ritual performed on a living dog. It is of extreme power and constitution.

**_Koma-inu_** : a stronger variant of the inugami with a metal body instead of a stone one.

**_Kajitsu-sake_** : literally grape-sake, it is the Japanese word for wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I strive to make this piece as historically accurate as I can. Which includes Edo-typical nuance.
> 
> And yes, that was Axii.  
> Won't the pronunciations of the Signs change over centuries, though?
> 
> The plot thickens. That body is the next clue.
> 
> Do let me know what you think, fellas!


	4. The Goddess of Yoshiwara III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A witcher's life is never easy, no matter what side of the world he is on.

_That bastard. That bastard._

_I’ll kill him for this. I have no doubts now._

_I’ll kill him._

* * *

“Murderer!”

Akira’s eyes darted upward, alert; when he saw the man who had yelled the word—the shōki’s surprise never reached his features. The man who yelled it was pointing straight at Akira as the shōki stood by the stone cat.

_Something happened._

The air about the people was different—the commoners had always glanced at him with suspicion, revulsion, and sometimes neutral curiosity—but now it was with blatant anger, hatred, and disgust; a change in all just one night. Noticeable from the minute he stepped out of Mameha’s brothel to this very second as people walked about the market square.

Akira was well-acquainted with folk to know the insults they were likely to give: _freak, mutant, demon._ But never in his life had he heard the word ‘murderer’ jabbed into him with so much conviction.

The man who had yelled it had long disappeared into the crowd, but the angry glares did not do the same. Perhaps a shinto had preached against Akira at sunrise, or the sohei had warned the populace to not go near the demon-queller—but whatever it was, Akira decided to ignore it; he had more things to worry about.

There was new blood on the statue’s feet.

The shōki frowned as he stared down at the pedestal. Akira had drunken too much last night, he could admit that—it had caused him to wake only when the sun began shining onto his face, but whether or not he woke up late, it still was far from enough time for the sohei to cleanse the pedestal of all traces and scent of new blood.

And yet.

The sparse drops of blood only began at Maneki-neko’s feet, as if the victim had been forcibly dragged to the statue and had put up a fight; the blood was too few to be from a slaughter. There were broken chopsticks scattered around the pedestal, jagged and obviously split by wild strength.

_The murder weapon?_ Akira wondered. He followed the spots of red and the weak, fresh scent away from the square, frowning more. This was a first—the victim had escaped, and mostly unscathed to boot. The red was nothing but an intermittent pattern of spots as opposed to yesterday’s streaks, and it slowly led to… where?

As Akira walked through the city, the crowds became thicker, the rage in their eyes increasing every second as he walked closer. They gossiped and muttered, but instead of the usual _freak,_ all Akira’s sharp ears could hear was the word _murderer_ and _woman-killer_.

Murmurs had never bothered the shōki in all his years on the Path. But now there was an incessant, uncomfortably tense feeling in his gut at every malicious whisper.

The trail of blood led the shōki to the bridge he had jumped off on his first night in the city. Unlike then, however, it was packed with people—nosy onlookers tiptoed on their _geta_ shoes; there were parents trying to dissuade their children from spying despite spying themselves. On the edge of the bridge, three sohei acolytes were pulling on a white rope. The wound hemp strained against some weight in the river’s rocks that Akira could not see. For a moment, he wondered if all these people were huddling over the corpse of the wet-woman slain nights ago.

“They’ve been at it for so long already!”

“Good gods. To be stuck between the stones like that…”

“Heave!” one of the acolytes yelled, pulling on the rope slung around his shoulder. “Come on, brothers, just a bit more and we’ll get her out!”

“She’s finally giving way! On the count of three!”

The sohei shoved against the rope. “Three!” one of them yelled, and the strained white cord flashed gold. It snapped upwards like a bowstring, and Akira saw the pale, twisted shape of a woman be hoisted over the red railings of Yoshiwara Bridge.

“That bastard,” a man next to Akira growled. “Why’d anyone drive a woman to do this?”

The crowd began inching forward, their murmurs increasing at the sight of the newest spectacle in Yoshiwara. Where the sohei did business, there was always a crowd—the holy men were responsible for blessing new corpses to prevent the possibility of possession, and cadavers never failed to lure people like flies to fruit. The commoners completely ignored one of the sohei yelling, _“Show respect!”_

Akira tried to shove through the crowd, intent on seeing where the trail of red drops led—he became more and more annoyed when his shoves were returned with hard jostling. The smell of the crowd’s sweat and excitement began tainting the thin layer of red in the air. “Step aside,” Akira grunted, pushing past a large man. “I’m a shōki, I’m here to—“

At the word shōki, the eyes of those within earshot turned and stabbed into Akira with glares of disgust. Several stepped back and bumped into the others, causing swears to mingle with the murmurs.

“That’s him!” A scrawny man cried over the hubbub, pointing a shaking finger at Akira. More heads turned. “A black haori, like I told you! I saw him cast a spell on her last night—but I-I ran away, I didn’t want him to do the same to me!”

“You have some gall showing your blasphemous face here.” The angry, haughty voice came from a beautiful face; she was dressed in the uniform of the white kimono and red hakama that Akira would recognize anywhere. “The shōki have no place in this city!”

The effect of the shinto maiden’s loud words was instantaneous. The men and women who refused to budge just moments ago flinched back in shock, fear written all over their faces. The several parents present picked up their children, a number of them shuddering and leaving the bridge with their kids in their arms. A mother, already burdened with a baby on her elbow, now desperately pulled the arm of a little boy who was gawking at Akira’s swords.

“Come away, sweetheart, you’ll get the mange by being near him …”

And just like that, a wide path to the bridge was formed. Only the sohei busying over the body and the priestess remained in his way, and they were glaring at Akira with eyes full of hate.

“Here to have a look at your handiwork, _demon-queller?”_ the shrine maiden spat the last word with sarcastic distaste. “Have your fill.”

She stepped aside, and nothing else obstructed Akira’s view of what lay on the stone bridge.

The red drops had long been rubbed into the stones by feet, the trail gone murky and blurred—but there was no denying the small, small smudge of red that led to where an oiran’s tall shoes were resting on the edge of the bridge, calmly set together. The classical indication of suicide.

Beside the shoes was a body.

The body was loosely covered by a kimono with an obi sash that was nearly falling off the waist. The victim had been disfigured by its exposure to the rushing estuary water; what should have been a woman’s graceful hands and legs were instead a pale, peeling, prune-like mess that passed more for the appendages of a monster than that of a human being. She had driven the points of chopsticks into her wrists and arms—blister-like wounds littered her skin, with several pieces of wood still sticking out of her body. As the sohei removed the rope through which they recovered the corpse, ugly purple marks revealed themselves, accidentally peeling off more of the skin as if it were paper. But disfigured or no, and whether peeling from saltwater or no, nothing could mask the peculiar dark scars that twisted the dead woman’s nose, cheeks, and lips.

Akira became very, very still. The insane oiran’s screams to her goddess rang in his ears, a damning accusation with every second that passed.

_No…_

_I didn’t think that—_

_I didn’t think._

“Pleased?” The priestess snarled. “We know you did this.”

Akira was frozen by the stare coming from that twisted face—so vibrant with life and worship last night, now dead and dripping with water on the cobblestones. Shaken by the priestess, Akira finally managed to turn his face away, his mind spinning.

“Don’t try to deny it,” the priestess grumbled, and the volume of her voice increased to boom throughout the bridge. “You casted one of your blasphemous spells on her—and she killed herself because of it!” She turned her stately, beautiful face to the crowd and raised her arms. “Look, people—this is what the so-called demon-quellers are! He stopped at nothing to gain his ryō—even going as far as to drive this woman to suicide! We can only trust the sohei when it comes to eradicating demons. They are not motivated by greed.” Her hoarse voice thinned; this was not her first preaching for the day. “They would never use their magic to harm common folk. And they would never take your children away.”

The crowd buzzed and muttered, yelled, amassing together like a clump of angry bees.

What the priestess said was not entirely true, but it was not entirely false. Akira glanced one last time at the body, the pang of guilt that had lanced into his nerves ebbing away with every second—no, ebbing away wasn’t the right word. Akira felt at his guilt, wrapped a hard hand around it and felt its cold bite, and shoved it deep into his chest where weight upon weight of guilt and remorse had accumulated over the years.

This one would just have to be another face in his nightmares.

He should have known that magic would be too volatile. Magic was always too volatile to use on people—a shōki could never be sure of how a person would react to it afterwards, or how the more dangerous crowd would feel at the news. And yet, Akira had.

Had the lure of ryō truly driven him to cut the investigation shorter with a wave of his fingers? That and his lack of foresight, more than anything else, sickened Akira to his stomach.

“Got anything to say for yourself, mutant?” the shrine maiden hissed.

Akira did not know what to say. He did not even know what he was supposed to think.

“She didn’t do anything wrong!” A man yelled. Akira risked a glance backwards, and saw that a fisherman was there, his hand raised with a stone in it. “Goddamn freak! You come here to kill our women and steal our children!”

“Demon!” the shout came, and a rock flew—it slammed into the stone by to Akira’s feet.

The priestess stepped backwards, her face triumphant; the crowd, inspired by the bravery of one man, picked up rocks themselves—their insults increased in loudness and obscenity, familiar rudeness mixing with the new calls of _woman-killer_ and _demon sorcerer._ Akira felt, rather than saw, rocks fly.

Akira braced himself, preparing to be hit—wanting to repent, somehow, to pay for the useless death with his own pain and bruises—

_Don’t be an idiot,_ a cold voice snapped. _It’s over. She’s dead._

_You can’t change the past._

Shakily, and with the instinct drilled into him by years of training, Akira positioned his fingers into the Sign of Puran.

The rocks froze in the air—then plummeted to the ground with enough force to shatter the smaller pebbles. Persons in the crowd gasped and swore, with the call _demon_ mixing in the air. Any intent they had of throwing more rocks disappeared. The field of magic stayed as the shōki turned his head, fixing a glare onto the crowd. He wanted to give them one clear message— _stay out of my way._

“What’s going on here?!”

The voice was youthful, masculine, and familiar. A young guard raced forward from the other end of the bridge, shoving past the sohei and the shrine maiden. “Put those stones away, you madmen!” the young guard yelled, his hand raised. Two other guards followed hot on his heels, and the trio paused when they came upon the disfigured body. “What… what the hell happened here?” the man said slowly.

“Ask that shōki,” the maiden growled, pointing at Akira. “His heretic sorcery has killed this woman, and now he has used sorcery on that crowd!”

“Throw him out, _dōshin!_ Before we do it ourselves!”

“How could the city guard let a man like this into Yoshiwara?!”

“At this rate, there’s going to be a riot.” The young guard approached Akira, a frown on his face and a mix of doubt, confusion, and apprehension mixed in his eyes. “Shōki-san, please, come with me. It will calm them somewhat.”

The guard gripped Akira by the arm and led him away as the crowds’ jeers grew louder and louder. The shrine maiden spat at Akira’s feet as he was marched away, and the two guards who accompanied the young dōshin trailed behind him, dissuading the crowd from following their harsh voices.

“Shōki,” the man finally said, after a long time of silence and leading Akira to nowhere in particular. “There’s no easy way to say this. You’ll have to leave the city.”

A muscle in Akira’s jaw twitched. “I can’t.”

“You either leave, or I arrest you for disturbing the peace,” the man replied gravely. “Unlike in other cities, magic may be freely used in Yoshiwara—but being the cause for riots is, as it is anywhere, something our _obugyo_ will not approve of.”

The guard stopped walking and stared straight into Akira’s eyes. “As painful as it is to say, shōki, we already have a group of people handling things here. I know—“ he added quickly, “I know they started riots of their own, but they have power over the magistrate that you don’t possess. I’m sorry, shōki-san.”

Akira sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The lack of bitterness from the young guard at least helped his headache pulse less than it already was. Jeers, stones, and shinto preaching against him—it was all back to the usual arrangement of things. And to think that just last night, he had a beautiful man tending to him. His life never seemed to stay comforting for long.

“I can’t leave,” Akira stated plainly. “I’ve been hired to slay Maneki-neko and, by the shōki’s code, I can’t abandon my contract. If you want me to leave, you’ll have to take it to my employer.”

“And who might that be?”

“Lady Mameha, the owner of the Forest,” Akira replied.

The young guard’s face became very withdrawn, and he looked away. “If the obugyo’s second cousin really hired you… well, I hope you do not feel insulted if I say I do not quite believe you, shōki-san. I’d like to speak to her myself.”

Akira shrugged, and the young guard led him away once more with a hard grip above Akira’s elbow—it was not as entertaining as when Teru did it. The shōki was marched through crowds and past exquisite buildings, the glares he received now mixed with self-righteous satisfaction when people’s eyes noted that Akira was surrounded by guards.

The group reached the entrance of The Forest, and the guards entered, Akira firmly tugged along. The Kondo servant at the door looked at the dōshin once with wide, wide eyes before kneeling down and pressing his face against the floor.

“I’d like to speak to Lady Mameha, yosei,” the guard said, his face uncomfortable and nervous—no doubt due to being inside a brothel while on duty. The Kondo made a small noise of assent and shuffled onto his feet, not raising his eyes as he went to go search for Mameha.

The lady appeared a few moments later, her elegant face beautifully stoic but with her eyes sharp and burning cold. She glared at Akira once.

“I suspect you are not here for the services of my establishment,” Mameha said to the three men, making no effort to hide her distaste even as the young guard bowed respectfully. “What have I done to deserve a visit from Yoshiwara’s dōshin?”

“Nothing, Mameha-sama,” the young guard answered, straightening. His face looked much less sure of what he was doing. “Just… I would just like to ask you a question, my lady.”

He finally straightened and gestured at the shōki. “This man has disturbed the city’s peace. According to what I’ve learned, he has used sorcery twice on the populace. The first time resulted in death. The dōshin would have him sent out of the city, but he claims he is bound to Yoshiwara by a contract. Yours. Is this true?”

Mameha’s stoic face twisted into one of spite, and she glanced at Akira several times as the guard spoke. “Unfortunately, it is true,” Mameha said finally, anger a metallic tinge in her smooth voice.

“Would you like to revoke this contract, my lady? This man—“

“I will not revoke it. Now leave.”

The young guard bowed once more, short and perfunctory, before leaving. The second he was outdoors, Mameha took one graceful step towards Akira, her pink and blue kimono a contrast to the dark emotion on her features.

“I do not recall asking you to cast spells on people,” Mameha snapped. “This is the last of your nonsense, shōki, or I am retracting my contract. Do not interfere in business not yours. I am not having my name dragged through the dirt by a mutant.”

Akira’s own gaze did not falter, and he nodded. He did not mind the word _mutant_ —a different insult entirely was still ringing itself in his ears.

* * *

Akira was always on the run.

As a demon-queller, he was on the run from many things—there were sentient monsters who wanted vengeance for dead loved ones; there were shugenja and sohei whose toes he had stepped on over the years. As a shōki from the School of the Dog, he was going to be forever chased down by the only other demon-queller he knew existed. And as a man, Akira was always on the run from his conscience. As years passed, fouler and fouler memories collected on his mind, persistently snagging onto his brain like the sticky web of a demon-spider.

Akira needed to busy himself before the demon-spider in his head took hold of him.

He was in his room, sitting on the cool tatami floor with his legs tucked under him. His haori was off and the large pouch that he always had by his side was now on the floor, open and revealing its contents of vials—most of them made of murky, colored glass. Three were empty. Next to the bag were astringent-smelling powders in bamboo boxes, plants bound by hemp, and bottled liquids sparkling strangely in the light from the window.

When combined, they would poison the ordinary human. But to the shōki who was mutated with toxins and mutagens from childhood, it would do nothing but grant him temporary strength if things went right, or hallucinations if things went wrong.

Akira had killed a woman to discover just what kind of decoctions he needed to face the monster. _I might as well make the most out of it._

The shōki uncorked two glass vials and half-filled them with a strong, special alcohol; then he took sulfate seeds and nightshade root, crushed them, and carefully laid it into one vial, the gentle fumes already enough to cause a grown man to hallucinate. The other vial he filled with dried yew, shaved foxglove, and shredded ravix—toxic to demons, or so they said—and finally he corked both and placed the murky vials beneath the window.

One would make the stamina of Akira’s body match that of the bakeneko; the other would make his feet as swift as its demonic step. Both would render his skin milk-white, his veins black and bulging like ink on his body, and his cat eyes more reflective than they already were.

_Demon._

He could understand the common folk—the shōki were feared as they were far from what could be understood. Why would anyone, after all, willingly ingest poisons to kill a monster?

It would take a good few hours for the toxins and essences to mix together, but a good few hours was exactly what Akira had—under no circumstance could he be out on the city streets in daylight.

Akira tucked the bundles of herbs and spare bottles back into his alchemy bag. He settled his hands onto his knees and closed his eyes—he did not dare attempt to sleep.

He already knew what he would see in his nightmares.

Instead, he meditated. The shōki curled his mind inwards, clearing his thoughts, just the way he had been taught. A calm, albeit somewhat forced blankness of mind overtook him and his limbs. Though it did not give the shōki the same heavy-lidded sensation of a pleasant night’s rest, it at least gave him an emptiness wiped clean of any nightmares, of any memory of beseeching, dead faces, of tearing hazel-brown eyes, of features twisted by boiling oil.

* * *

_“How much is needed for you to do as I ask?”_

_The ronin rubbed his chin, his black eyes in the candlelight flickering like gold. “Five ryō.”_

_Five pieces of gold were swiftly placed onto the table by a pale hand. The ronin blinked._

_“He wears a black haori with orange sigils, eh?”_

_A nod._

_“Very well. I’ll do as you said.”_

* * *

“Where is Teru?”

Akira was ready to begin his night patrol. A trembling thrill entered his veins and somewhat replaced the guilt that had been coursing in his head. He clenched the freshly prepared elixirs in his fist; the glass was warm—not from his own flesh, but from the toxins that brewed inside.

The shōki stood by the exit of the brothel and would have, in that second, left, had his nose not noted the scent of kiku flowers filtering out from the rooms of the halls. He sorely missed something— _someone_ —and he could not help from asking the words.

“Yosei?” Akira repeated.

The Kondo elf that had been mopping the floor jolted at Akira’s question. “Oh!” the yosei exclaimed, bowing. “You were talking to this one. Forgive me, my lord.” He bowed deeper. “Master Teru has been out on an errand since dawn, shōki-sama. He needed to buy several things in preparation for Lady Mameha’s special guest.”

_But he said he would see me again today,_ Akira thought, irrationally disappointed before he could stop himself. “When will he—“

A scream pierced the air.

Akira spun, his right hand going to his swords, his ears nearly twitching as he determined the source. He stepped forward, silent and quick as a cat, eyes darting around—the patrons in the lobby had stilled, their laughter and talk killed by the bloodcurdling sound.

_A woman’s scream,_ Akira noted, sidestepping a man frozen. _Towards the left._ He knew this brothel well enough to know where he was heading. Another scream rang, louder and clearer to Akira’s ears due to his proximity, and the shōki dashed towards the dining room.

A woman slammed into him.

“My lord!” She cried out. Her wide, terrified eyes fixated on Akira once before turning to face something behind her. “I’m sorry—please—“

She hid behind Akira, trembling, her oiran hairpieces starkly contrasting her horrified expression. One sleeve of her kimono threatened to fall off her shoulder.

_“Sorry?”_ a man’s voice mocked her high-pitched tone. Akira stepped aside, and a scarred-faced samurai and his burly companion brushed against the shōki. “Oiwa-chan, I don’t think ‘sorry’ is enough to cover for what your family did to me.”

The samurai loomed over the shaking oiran—she had collapsed to the floor, and the man grinned as he grabbed her roughly by the hair. “But how the tables have turned, eh? Daddy dies, your brother gambles away the family fortune, and now the high and mighty Oiwa who used to sneer at me is now my plaything for the night.” He twisted her hair crudely, and he smiled nastily at her hiss of pain. “Maybe for forever. I could buy you every single day.”

Oiwa was trembling. Akira wanted to step in. He wanted to.

_Do not interfere in business not yours._

“Would you like that, you bitch?”

“Iemon—“

_“Lord_ Iemon,” the samurai corrected tersely. “I remember your father slapped me once when I corrected him. Then he gave me this.” He patted his cheek—the scar there was so large and patchy that it looked more like diseased skin. “I ought to give you one to match. _Karma,_ as the priests say.” Iemon barked a laugh and drew a slim _tanto_ dagger from his side—he drew the point of it across Oiwa’s shivering legs, her chest, her bared shoulder, then pressed its bright edge into her cheek.

Akira’s hand tightened on his steel sword. Was he really going to choose his contract over this woman?

“Shōki-san.”

Akira jerked around.

He nearly did not recognize her. The hair that was so meticulously put up last night was now a bedraggled waterfall down her back and shoulders. Her robes, tightly and artistically arranged when she sat by the table with her brother, were now clutched shut only by a pale, shaking hand. Keiko looked up at him, her lovely face pinched.

“Shōki.” Keiko’s voice trembled. Akira’s sharp ears heard her pounding heart. “Please, help her. You have a sword.”

Oiwa made a choking cry—the edge of the cold knife now sank into her cheek, red oozing out from under the steel edge. Many of the patrons had left the lobby—the ones that remained turned their eyes away.

“You’re still robed and perfumed,” Iemon grumbled. “High and mighty, even though you’re now just a whore. You need to learn the real street treatment.”

He grabbed at her kimono collar and tore it open. Silk ripped and gave way, coming loose despite the tight obi sash. Oiwa shrieked and Iemon laughed, pinning her to the ground with a hard knee to her stomach, and Oiwa—

She scratched Iemon hard across the face.

The samurai froze, his hand coming up to touch his cheek. It came away with small red stains.

“You little—!” Iemon snarled and grabbed Oiwa by the wrists, pinning her down. “You don’t get to give me orders anymore! I paid for you!”

“Shōki-san.” Keiko grabbed Akira’s arm urgently. “I’m begging you, please—help her! Can’t you see what’s happening?!”

Akira didn’t.

He could not see Keiko’s beseeching face, he could not see Oiwa crying. He saw something else—the cold bite of the oncoming winter, the chill that would stab into his feet and body if he did not have proper lodgings in the next months; he relived the starving nights; the endless, acrid pain in his stomach; he felt the desperation that might drive him, once more, to kill men and not monsters for coin.

Akira saw things he could never go back to—not if he wanted to preserve his humanity. But to never go back to them, he had to be sure that he would never be desperate again.

Akira stepped away from Keiko—he was unable to look at her in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, politely, but he knew it wouldn’t change anything. “I’m a shōki, Keiko. I’m not paid to keep you girls safe.”

“You…” Keiko sucked in a breath. “You’re part of the damn problem!”

The sound of tearing cloth stopped for a moment, and Iemon glanced at Keiko. “Oi, whore! Shut up!”

Akira turned away and began walking—he walked past the glaring Keiko, past Oiwa who was looking up at him with wet eyes that screamed for help.

“My brother was wrong about you, shōki!” Keiko yelled. Her voice had changed—it was hoarse, livid. Painful to the ears.

“Shut her up, Yotsuya!” Iemon snapped. His large, burly companion responded to the name and neared Keiko, glaring down at her.

“You’ll die for this!” Keiko hissed, and Akira finally brought himself to look at her face. Her burning eyes were focused on Iemon, and her face was twisted into a horrible, lion-like snarl. “You won’t live to see tomorrow, you piece of—“

“Shut her up!”

Yotsuya raised a large glove-covered fist. Keiko glared up at him, unfazed.

“Do it,” Keiko goaded, stepping closer. “Hit me and your hand will be gone before dawn. I swear it.”

Akira saw a slight tremble run through Yotsuya’s fist. Keiko’s cold glare—it could make any man freeze.

“Oi, Yotsuya!” Iemon called, his hands fisted in Oiwa’s obi sash. “What’s the matter with you?”

“And you.” Keiko turned her glare to Iemon. Her long, ragged hair made her look feral. “Shame that woman here and now, and tomorrow you’ll be strung up on a pole. I swear that to you.”

“Destroy that bitch’s mouth, Yotsuya!”

_No, don’t—_

Yotsuya recovered and slammed his fist down into Keiko’s shiny, painted mouth. Teru’s sister fell to the floor from the force, her silk robes pooling around her like broken butterfly wings. Keiko coughed, once, and looked up at the man who struck her. She smiled, and a line of blood trickled down the corner of her lip.

“I warned you,” Keiko whispered softly. Akira heard it for what it was—a clear promise of pain. A threat.

Yotsuya trembled again, and Iemon stood. The samurai glared at Keiko once and spat. “Goddammit, my mood’s been spoiled. And I thought this was a place that would give me everything I wanted. Let’s go, Yotsuya.” He turned, but not before giving Oiwa a kick to her ribs that made her cry out. “I’ll be back for you, girl.”

The samurai and his companion walked past Akira; Keiko immediately ran to the crying girl, who was now shaking and wracked with sobs. Keiko whispered to her, held her face, not even minding the blood dripping off her chin. Her sharp, sharp eyes transfixed on Akira once.

She looked at him like he was vermin.

Akira turned away. There was no reason for him to stay here. He had a reasonable lead—a man abused a woman, and it was as good trail as any that would lead him to the demon.

Akira followed the clacking of highborn geta shoes and the soft clinking of a sword slapping against a tanto out onto the street; the samurai and his companion remained clear in Akira’s vision despite the dark cover of a moonless night. Akira followed, and he uncorked one of the vials he held in his hand. The shōki put it up to his lips, and his sharp nose smelled the acrid mix of toxic herbs and strong alcohol. Then, he drank it.

Akira’s eyes shut for a moment and he hissed, the familiar fire-streak of pain coursing down his throat, his gullet, settling into his stomach with a sensation not unlike sparking fire. He gasped in a ragged breath and uncorked the second vial, pouring its contents into his mouth.

His vision bleared, his blood pounded in his ears, a horrible, barb-like pain drove along his spine and nape—and disappeared. The surrounding areas grew sharper, and Akira felt a well-known, coiling strength curl around his arms and legs, into the muscles that he would need if the demon showed itself tonight.

Akira tucked the empty bottles into the pouch at his side and kept trailing the two men. He had greater command over his reflexes now—he would not flinch if he did not want to, not even if a burning coal were to be shoved into his eyes.

Akira wished he had such control over his own thoughts.

He might have told Teru yesterday that he was a free man, but now he knew the truth: he wasn’t. The shōki was chained to his contracts, to coin, like any other man was chained to a mundane, grinding life. He had let a woman be harassed simply to obey his employer.

But something disturbed Akira more than this.

It was the image of Keiko, snarling like a wild beast, her long hair framing her like a mane. Keiko speaking threats as if she knew exactly what would happen to the two men the shōki was following now.

_Did you show yourself to me already, Maneki-neko?_

* * *

_You’re more of a demon than I am._

* * *

**Lexicon:**

**_Dōshin_** **:** the lower class of city guard that dealt with city patrols and often interacted with commoners during the Edo period.

**_Obugyo_** : a city magistrate, similar in function to a mayor.


	5. The Goddess of Yoshiwara IV

_How could you?_

_How could you, you bastard?_

* * *

The atmosphere was terrible.

The cruel air which Akira trudged through on the streets yesterday had seemed to crawl into the confines of the brothel. Ten hours had passed ever since he had arrived to the Forest, and the sky’s pink hues at dawn had now turned into a dark purple sheet that pressed into the windows of the dining room.

Akira had returned to The Forest that morning with nothing new other than a pulsing headache from the potions’ toxins. The samurai and his companion led Akira to a grand lodging-house lined with aristocratic carriages; he had stayed within the shadows of its walls that entire night, his ears trained for screams, his eyes searching for a prowling, two-tailed beast, or for a beautiful woman with long, dark hair—but the stony streets remained silent except for the eerie whistle of wind and the footfalls of the occasional drunk. Eventually, morning came with no scent of red iron spilling through the air. Even the statue of the stone cat was unstained when Akira visited it, and sported no change except for more offerings of jewelry, rice, and milk at its clawed feet. Nothing had happened that night.

Except for the abuse that Akira had stood by—and he felt its effects now.

The Kondo servants cowered away from Akira when he had left his room with a new batch of elixirs in hand. When he gave one Kondo a request to prepare a meal for him, the olive-skinned yosei had flinched, and slipped away without even saying a word—the servants used to smile at him, Akira remembered distantly, and it was likely due to Teru’s remarks and praises. But no amount of praises could erase Akira’s cowardice from the servants’ minds.

It was still twilight, and thus only a sparse number of patrons walked across the lobby where a girl had nearly been raped the previous night—they avoided Akira as much as the citizens outside did. An oiran had passed Akira by when he entered the dining room, and she gave him a dark look before slipping past. When the simple but delicious-looking meal arrived to his table, Akira would not have been surprised if the cook had spat into it before serving.

Akira pressed his fingers into his left temple, attempting to massage the potions’ migraine out of his head. The venomous looks, the scowls, the fear—Akira understood already that he was not welcome here. The only reason why he was not yet thrown onto the streets was because Teru had made the shōki his guest, but it would only be a matter of time until that beautiful man would look at Akira with the same harsh eyes. He had let his sister be hit in the face, after all.

Akira did not want to see Teru. The shōki did not want to see the man’s gentle eyes turn cold, no matter how much he deserved it.

Akira sighed and began eating. _Good things truly don’t last for long_ , he thought grimly _._ He would have to dispatch the demon soon and leave—he couldn’t stand the sight of the garish change himself. More rice left Akira’s bowl and more patrons slipped into the dining room with their courtesans; one particularly loud man settled beside Akira, arm in arm with a girl looking as beautiful and fragile as a sakura petal. Akira had to give the lady credit—her acting skills were pristine; the man did not ever notice that in between the oiran’s laughter and courtesies, she glanced at Akira with a look as scathing as smoldering coals.

Akira had nearly finished his meal when the loud nobleman beside him stood and explained, in the most eloquent way he could muster, that he had to take a piss. The half-drunk nobleman had barely stumbled past Akira when the shōki felt the girl lean toward him.

“You’re not worth your swords,” she hissed.

Akira did not turn his head to look at her. He always did what he did with the common folk—he ignored her.

“Do you know how old Oiwa is?” the oiran asked him again. “She’s barely seventeen, you know. She couldn’t stop crying last night.”

Akira continued eating, but he could not keep his hands from clenching harder around his chopsticks. He missed Teru more badly in that second than he ever had in the past two days—this lady was a far cry from the dinner companion Teru made, and the scent of her perfume was too sharp, the coppery tang that came off her gold ornaments resembling the oily scent of ryō too much. He missed Teru’s gentle kiku flowers and vanilla, scents that were as gentle and inviting as his sweet smile and the opened door of his room. His longing was so sharp that he could nearly smell that scent again—and Akira realized with a jolt that he _was._

“Yume, get away from the shōki.”

That smooth, pleasant voice. It was the first time Akira had heard it in two days and it was telling a girl to get away from him.

Akira unintentionally kept his gaze on the near-empty bowl on his table as Teru sat down before him; the man clasped his delicate, ivory hands on the wooden surface—hands that would never lay themselves on Akira’s arm again. He couldn't look Teru in the eyes. How could he? The man once saw him as a hero, and now—

"Look at me, Akira."

Akira did, reluctantly.

He regretted it. Teru's elegant features were twisted in coldness and disappointment that he didn't even bother to hide. His dark eyes, hard as steel, looked at Akira as if he were a pest—just as Keiko had. But the expression was even harder to look at when it was on Teru's features.

"Why, Akira?" Teru asked, his voice tense, his lovely mouth twisted into a thin line. There was something new about him, Akira noticed almost resignedly—two long loops of bright red beads hung off his neck, the metallic sheen of them stark against his white kimono.

"I felt so self-assured when I left," Teru continued. His voice was bitter, his brows furrowed. "I always get worried sick for my sister when I have to leave the city, but this time, I was so sure that she would be safe, what with you around.” Teru shook his head. “And when I come back, everyone tells me you killed the insane woman on the street, and my sister told me that you… just _why,_ Akira?"

Those dark eyes pleaded Akira for an answer. But Akira had none. There was no excuse, no justification, for what he had done. He did it all for gold and nothing more.

Akira couldn't keep himself from looking at Teru's beads. They were a new and jarring sight of luxury on such a simple man, and it reminded Akira of something that he couldn't quite place. They were made of red metal and glinted with pearly white and gold paint—signs of extremely expensive jewelry.

Teru sighed and stood up. "You're curious about this?" he asked quietly, _coldly,_ as he ran his hands across the loops of his necklace. "It’s from an admirer, Akira."

Whatever hope had kindled in Akira's gut two nights ago disappeared completely—of course Teru had admirers. Rich admirers—how else would he be able to treat Akira so lavishly? With that face, he must have had numerous men and women lining up at his feet, loaded with gold and all of them worth more of Teru's time than Akira could ever hope to be. Even a beggar would be more appealing than the shōki right now—at least paupers did not kill insane women.

Teru turned, but not before piercing Akira with a look that made guilt churn in his gut.

“When you kill that demon,” Teru muttered, “I hope you think it was worth it.”

* * *

Oiwa ached.

The cut down her cheek pulsed and stung like a fresh wound that had been rubbed in with salt; it hurt to blink, it hurt to speak, and each time her eyes screwed up together when she cried in her fitful sleep, the stitches reopened and fresh blood poured down her her face. She would scar terribly—and she had no idea how she was supposed to repay for her foolish brother's debt then.

But the wound was not the worst of the pain.

She thought of Iemon, his sneer, his threat that he would come back for her. The thought of that man coming near her again made Oiwa shake worse than her fever did. The thought of his hands on her, his mouth—it made her want to scream.

But she could not scream, or else her wounds would reopen and color her pillows in red ink.

Instead, Oiwa clasped her hands together, and prayed.

Girls like her had little refuge in anything else—girls who had nothing except their faces and their youth had no one to look to except fate and gods. Once, she had thought that the gentleman who wore two swords would have been someone she could look to as well, but the only looking she had done was through tear-misted eyes as Iemon had torn apart her clothing.

"Maneki-kami," she whispered. Her voice cracked from fever, her mouth dry, but she kept praying. "Please... save me from them. Save me from them all."

"And save yourself from that monster,” she hissed, thinking of golden slit-pupiled eyes.

And Oiwa did not know it, but her god was listening very intently.

* * *

Iemon was a difficult man to trail.

He went to the most crowded of places, no doubt to gain the satisfaction from commoners bowing before his sigil-bearing haori and sword. The man went to numerous izakaya only to leave them again within the hour, apparently on the guise of making courtesy visits to other samurai who participated in one of the recently ended clan wars. Twice Iemon went to a gambling establishment and once to a brothel where he did nothing but talk, it seemed, to ever more people. For the shōki who could now walk in the city as freely as a leper, he struggled to stay in the shadows and two sword-lengths away from any person. He kept close to blindspots in the walls and, more often than not, Iemon was out of sight—Akira had to train his ears to follow the sound of his telltale gait: the slight drag of his left foot, likely the fruit of a war injury.

The city slowly curled into itself in the night; the crowd thinned and died, and soon Iemon's footsteps were the only ones that remained. The waxing crescent moon peeked over thick rainclouds to smile over Yoshiwara's sinister alleys. The clean scent of oncoming rain hovered in the air. The thrum of his elixirs' poisonous strength still throbbed in his veins.

Akira followed Iemon through an alley that absolutely did not befit the samurai; it was dingy, littered with crates, and smelled of cat piss. Yet Iemon walked through it without a care in the world.

And suddenly stopped.

Akira crouched behind a stockpile of wood as Iemon turned his head, grinning nastily.

"We should stop this game," Iemon said out loud.

Akira frowned and stayed silent.

"I know you're there," Iemon continued, and in a swift whistling movement he drew his sword. The silvery polished blade of it reflected fractals of light along the filthy walls. "I've known you were there since I left my lodge house. Do you think I'm some sort of fool, assassin?" Iemon gripped his sword with both hands. "I've cut up enough of your ilk to notice."

There was no use to keep the pretenses. Akira rose and stared at Iemon hard. When the samurai did not flinch at the sight of skin as white as maggots, or at luminescent eyes flashing like a demon's, Akira knew immediately that he was near-sighted.

"Who sent you?" Iemon asked. "Takeda? Minamoto? Show me your sigils!"

Akira raised his arm, and the runed sigil of his School glinted orange and gold into Iemon's eyes. "I'm not an assassin,” Akira explained. “I'm a shōki. I'm the only one keeping you safe tonight."

The samurai looked bewildered, but he did not lower his sword. "Safe from what?"

"The goddess of Yoshiwara."

The point of Iemon's sword shook ever so slightly.

And then he laughed. His hysteric barking bounced off the walls in a scornful echo, ringing harshly into Akira’s ears.

"A swordsman like you actually believes in fishwives' tales? Ha!" Iemon's voice shook as his teeth flashed out like a wolf's. "I come back to the cities at last, and every man in them has become a fool. And to think that I thought Yotsuya was the only buffoon in Yoshiwara!"

"Where is Yotsuya?" Akira asked. He was nigh certain that the target would be Iemon instead of his large companion—his crime was much, much greater—but professional instinct called him to doubt.

Iemon shrugged. "Praying for forgiveness at some shrine, he told me. What an idiot. Now will you stop following me? I've business to attend to."

 _You mean rape,_ Akira thought, recalling his threat to Oiwa. When the shōki did not move, Iemon scowled as darkly as he had toward Keiko.

"You're just a peasant, aren't you? Get lost, before I demand _kirisute-gomen."_

Akira's lips thinned. That was the term samurai used when they demanded apologies from commoners—if an insult were perceived, the samurai had every power and right to kill that peasant on the spot. Akira had seen this too often in the farmlands, where peasants begged for mercy as they starved, where _kiruste-gomen_ meant the same as _extortion._

Iemon stalked forward, his sword glinting in his right hand. "You..." he began, but whatever insult boiled on his tongue simmered away when his eyes focused on the shōki's face. “What… what the hell are—“

"I'm a shōki," Akira repeated. He stepped forward and Iemon flinched back, his eyes widening in horror as the shōki’s sickening face came ever closer. "A demon hunter. Just go on your way, Iemon, and—"

Akira's words drowned in a peal of thunder. No—not thunder. Consecutive booms rang out across the streets, the sound a mix of the crashing of drums and the roar of beasts, the beat of heavy stone against the street a dreadful accompaniment to the orchestra—there were tremors in the ground, slight tremors rhythmic as a heartbeat—as footsteps.

Iemon staggered backwards, pressing his hands to his ears. "What in the nine hells is that?!"

Akira strained his hearing; he heard the scratch of stone claws, a stern voice yelling commands, and the distant, distant scream of a man being torn to pieces.

"Inugami," Akira murmured, and he turned and sprinted out onto the street.

* * *

Wind whipped at Akira's face as he flew down the road. He passed dozens of houses by the second, but he did not lose his breath—if anything on him strained, it was the straps of his sandals. His even breathing did not begin to match his rapid footsteps.

The thunderous roaring of the inugami only grew louder and louder. The spell-born and -bound dogs of the sohei were heard on city streets for two reasons only: first was because they were accompanying their holy masters in patrols or ceremonies; the second, more frightening reason was that they were on the hunt.

The enchanted dogs of the sohei did not fail; they followed the orders of their masters to the letter. They would not halt their chase even if their stone bodies were crushed into powder, even if a cannon were to perforate their eardrums. Akira could see them now—large, furry heads and statue bodies racing down the road. He was gaining on them in the cobbled street; normally he would not be able to even run at their pace, but with his elixirs, he was now abreast of them, their hard panting hot on his legs and loud in his ears.

The shōki needed to get there first. If the sohei captured the demon before he did, they would keep it alive, experiment on it for god knows what in medicine and science—and then Akira would be without his coin.

Then winter winds would blow. Akira forced himself to run even faster, speeding down streets, and suddenly he felt a panting breath escape him.

 _No, no, no, not now—_ the elixirs were beginning to wane; too many hours with it in his body had passed, and now it filtered out with each pound of his heart, each bead of sweat on his brow, and the energy started to wane into an ache in his head—

The dogs started to gain on Akira again, racing forward—

_No—_

And that was when he smelled it.

Akira stopped in his tracks. The dogs sped on towards where the screaming had erupted moments ago, completely oblivious to the unmistakable stench of fresh blood that hung in the air. The iron was so acrid and tangy that Akira paused, panting slightly—it could only have come from a minute-old slaughter.

The scent of red came from a dark alley that opened like the maw of some sea monster. Akira stared at it, then at the stone dogs that disappeared behind a street corner. _I won't be able to get ahead of them anyway_ , Akira thought, approaching the alley. _The dogs must have been ordered to follow the screams._

_"Here, shōki."_

It was a soft, soft whisper that Akira barely heard. The shōki tensed—it seemed every bit a trap and he knew it.

But he was far from being afraid.

Akira reached at his belt and slowly drew his silver sword from its scabbard—with the enchantments on its razor edge, it was meant for the killing of the more complex of monsters. For a moment, the pure silver blade lit up the alley with its reflection. Empty.

Akira walked into the darkness, dilating his pupils until they were blown out across his irises. It was not a narrow corridor of a street as he first suspected, but rather, a cramped, circular roundabout crammed in the middle of tightly packed houses. The houses were gray and drab, signatures of poverty away from the city center. Smaller alleys branched out between them like twisted veins, and the cluttered street was cluttered further by boxes, wood piles, crates, and barrels, all of which stank of mold and decay.

But above it all, the strong, sickly scent of blood in the air.

_"Hello, shōki."_

Akira tilted his head. _Where is that voice coming from?_ The soft hiss was not quite feminine, not quite masculine, but alluring in its purr. It lilted with a slight timbre that made Akira feel, eerily, that he had heard this voice before.

"Maneki-neko?" Akira asked. He gripped his sword with two hands and raised the blade to his temple, letting the sleeves of his jacket surround his face like a shield. His orange sigils sparked and flared, shining golden moonlight into the dark walls.

It was a stance hammered into Akira since childhood—the _te ura gasumi_ , which raised the wielder’s sword like a horn and let the sigils of his sleeves flank either side of his body. The haori was a shōki's most important article of clothing—aside from the fact that the woven enchantments staved off possession, its runed sigils, when flashed into a demon's face, would cause it to balk in irrational fear. The few seconds that fear bought often meant everything between life and death.

"Show yourself!" Akira called out.

_"You have to be the most hideous man I've ever seen. The most despicable one, too."_

_Where are you?_ Akira slowly turned in a circle. He felt a small tremor of apprehension—if the bakeneko were speaking, it meant that it was in its human form; and while it was a force to be reckoned with as a cat, its claws stronger than the inugami and tougher than steel—in human form, the shapeshifter simply could not be killed.

And Akira was in a tight alley, drowned in shadows. His elixirs were waning. A knife was all it would take.

 _"How do you feel, knowing that if you kill me, this city will return to what it was?"_ Scathing laughter rang, a haughty sound that led Akira further into the cramped space. _"Some protector of innocents you are. Are you proud of yourself?"_

"Are you?" Akira shot back. He ignored any feelings of guilt that might have trickled into his chest—he needed to keep the demon talking. He wanted to have an idea of what it knew, how much it knew—and who it truly was.

 _"Of course I am."_ The voice floated down derisively, as if Akira were a stupid child asking stupid questions. _"You have no idea what it was like before I came—every night, the wailing of women, the sobbing of girls, families locking up their daughters behind doors for fear. Now a woman can walk down the streets unmolested. Only outsiders are foolish enough to try."_

"Like the man whose blood I smell right now?"

_"Like the monster whose blood you smell right now."_

"Aren't you the real monster, Maneki?"

 _"Aren't you?"_ the voice sneered, ringing suddenly from Akira's left. He turned sharply, moonlight dancing on his silver blade. _"Look at your face. Look at what you've done. Perhaps you're the real villain of this story."_

Akira tensed, frenzied screams for forgiveness resounding in his head.

"I haven't done anything wrong," Akira protested. _Go ahead,_ he thought. _Prove me wrong. Tell me what you know._

A leonine growl rumbled. _"You killed one woman and allowed two more to be abused, and you don't think that's wrong? That girl could have been raped, and you stood idly by!"_

 _Come to the Forest often?_ The shōki wanted to quip as new information sank into his head. Akira walked further into the darkness; he might not have known the source of the voice, but he could follow the scent of blood.

"Who did you kill?" Akira questioned.

 _"Want to see him? Come closer."_ The voice purred dangerously close and Akira's heart sped up ever so slightly. The stench of blood turned into a cloying, sticky wall against his nostrils.

 _"It's someone you know,"_ the demon murmured. _"Someone a lot like you. He begged me not to kill him—that he didn't mean to do it, that he did it for his employer, his gold, his circumstance... is that not the same thing you would tell me? You let that girl be cut because of Mameha."_

Akira could hardly breathe. "How do you know that?"

 _"I know everything,"_ the demon drawled. _"I know that you are no better than those rapists. Those who allow evil to happen are evil themselves. And so I will treat them all the same."_

Akira stopped in his tracks when he heard the sound of slow dripping.

He saw the blood first. Blood, and large hirsute arms—instead of hands, white bones poked out of the stumps at the wrists, dripping a thick red onto the stones. Beside the arms was a head with a rough-hewn face, the lips completely torn off. Blood steadily trickled from the gaping hole that used to be a mouth.

A fitting punishment for striking a girl in her lips.

 _"The same will happen to you!"_ the demon roared.

Golden eyes flashed in the shadows, and something flew toward Akira's face.

He could not dodge—the alley was too narrow, a crate jabbed into his stomach, and something horrible struck between his eyes like a burning slap, hard, fleshy, dousing Akira's eyelids with thick, copper-tasting fluid.

The shōki staggered backwards, holding his sword out with one hand and wiping furiously at the blood on his eyelids with the other. He opened them in a split second, eyes still stinging from the attack, and saw it— _her._

A thin, scarred black cat, no larger than what you would find on the street—completely ordinary except for her two tails and the large hand in her fangs.

Her hackles rose and the cat rushed forward with a yowl. Akira raised his sword, tense and his senses strained—she was so quick, a racing black shadow that the shōki’s eyes barely followed, and when Akira drove his silver blade down it struck nothing but air and dirty stone walls. He turned, seething and breathing hard and he ran out of the alley—he came upon the street and for a moment it was empty— _empty!—_ until he constricted his pupils and saw a black shape, in the distance, disappear behind a shack at the very end of the road.

Akira ran, his breath coming up in quick pants—he was slower, but he finally reached the dingy house and turned a corner—

And a dark shape swooped down from the roof.

For a moment, Akira was stunned by the darkness and the rustle of thick clothing—then he saw a blade flash out from behind a tattered cloak, a long silver snake darting for the shōki’s neck, and it nearly would have ended him—would have—had Akira been a normal man.

He wasn’t.

Akira parried the assaulting blow with his silver sword and the scream of blade against blade blared in the street.

Across their crossed blades, Akira saw his assailant's black eyes widen in surprise—then in unmistakable horror.

The shōki kicked the stranger hard in the ribs and slammed him into the dirty wall, the sound of bones cracking clear to Akira's ears. The assailant gasped, and quickly, cleanly, Akira sheathed his silver blade and drew one of steel. It shone, and the assailant struggled to his feet, one hand around his own sword and the other clutching his ribs.

"You parried that..." the assailant coughed, and red bloomed on the lower half of his lined face. “No man can possibly..."

"Who are you?" Akira growled. "Who sent you?"

Instead of speaking, the assassin lunged.

Akira spun away from the darting blade and parried again, slamming his blade home with enough strength to send the assassin’s sword flying—the man flinched, stunned, for a second distracted, and Akira lashed out with a blurring strike—blood sprayed and a scream rang as the shōki’s sword slashed the man’s shoulder open.

The man leapt back, dodging Akira’s second blow by a hairsbreadth—the assassin was quick, quicker than an ordinary thug, but Akira's eyes were quicker and he saw the stranger draw a dagger from his sleeve.

The man threw his knife toward Akira's throat.

The shōki flicked his blade out, as calmly and disdainfully as he would flick away a fly. No one saw it in the darkness, but the sound of blade catching blade rang, and a dagger fell limply to Akira's feet.

"You deflected…" the man shakily scrabbled backwards. “By the gods, he never said you were a—“

“Who is this he?” Akira hissed. Anger pulsed in his veins—the demon had vanished, and would be nothing but a trail of red and, later, a ghost of perfumed cinnamon oil. He had hoped he could kill the demon before another death happened, and to leave as soon as possible—but now he would have to go through the trouble of tracking her down again; to make things worse, the city now absolutely reared against him. No ordinary, untrained man could dodge a shōki's strike, and the kind of man that could was expensive and could only be hired by the powerful.

“Answer me!” Akira snapped. The assassin flinched back, slamming his red shoulder into the shack.

"It was—it was—" The man trembled. "Oh, gods, what are you?!"

Akira hesitated, then raised his hand to make the Sign of Akusi. The assassin’s eyes glazed over, and he went slack, his tense face turning obedient. “Who sent you?”

"I don't know his name," the man answered calmly as his blood dripped onto the filthy alley. "It was a rich man."

"Why did he want me dead? Did he say anything?"

"He said..." The assassin's face went limp with recall. “...that you had crimes to pay for. He told me to throw your body over Yoshiwara Bridge if I could. A fitting end, he said."

Akira frowned.

"He told me to take your swords, armor, and bag back to him as proof. And he said..."

The mist over the assassin's eyes lifted like a curtain being drawn, consciousness slipping back into his dark irises.

"What the—good gods,” the assassin breathed, his entire body shaking. “You’re a sorcerer, you—“

"Be quiet," Akira murmured, flicking his sword to cleanse the assassin's blood off the blade. His temples ached, but it was not just from his toxic potions. Maneki-neko was making less and less sense; for all the shōki knew, the assassin’s employer could have been the demon—but another, smaller instinct in his head, the one that had been right about Yotsuya, called him to doubt.

"How did you know where to find me?” Akira asked, narrowing his eyes. “And don’t even think of lying.”

"He told me to wait on this roof," the man said, wearily dropping his head. "He said you would come here. That's all he ever said. He didn't talk much."

Akira adjusted his grip on his sword.

"I'm not lying!" the assassin protested. "I have no loyalty to that damned trickster! I have no intention of taking you on again, either. I'll leave you be." He shakily stood up, wincing as he pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder.

Akira thought for a moment.

"No," he finally said. "Stay here."

"Sorcerer—“

"Shut up," Akira hissed, and the man kept his silence. After a moment's pause, the shōki sheathed his sword, shed off his haori, and began removing the straps of his leather armor by his neck.

"Ah," the assassin said quietly. "I see."

Akira did not reply, only busied himself with taking off his throat guard, vambraces, his armor by his thighs. He removed both his swords, still sheathed in their moon-patterned scabbards, and laid them on his arm; the last thing he did before untying his alchemical pouch from his belt was to draw out a vial. It had the strong, nauseous fragrance of clematis, and the shōki uncorked the bottle before replacing it inside the pouch. Its contents sloshed and dripped over his haori and armor.

With a grimace, Akira handed his possessions to the assassin. The light feeling on his body was far from pleasant—the shōki felt like he was naked. The assassin took the odd bundle with trembling hands.

"Take this to whoever employed you," Akira instructed the man, glaring as intimidatingly as he could muster. His head pulsed more and more. "Give it all the appearance that you did manage to kill me."

The man nodded his assent, carrying the bundle under one arm. His blood dripped slowly onto Akira's belongings, and the shōki could see that the man was young despite the fact that his face was lined with scars. That alone justified his fright at the shōki's face.

"What did your employer's voice sound like?" Akira questioned as the man walked away.

The assassin paused and turned his face toward the shōki—Akira fought down the feeling of sympathy rising in his chest. He and the assassin were too much alike for his liking; the shōki knew as well as him what it felt like to be tricked into a contract, and what it felt like to pay for a miscalculation with your blood.

"Harsh," the assassin said at last. "Rough and deep."

The inugami growls rang through the sky that smelled of petrichor. Another downpour was coming.

* * *

_I won. I won. I won._

* * *

Akira had already spent two nights in the shadows. This would be the third.

He followed the nauseous fragrance of clematis in the air, his footsteps silent and his body shrouded in shadow as he went from one cramped alley to another. After the assassin had left a night ago, the shōki had weathered through the midnight downpour among the rusting tools in a broken-down shed. Rain had trickled into the roof and wind had cut through the dilapidated wood; the sun slowly rose, the sohei collected the dismembered head and arms, and a sharp hunger set into the shōki’s belly—through all this he remained as still as stone. He finally opened his eyes when the darkness pressing into his eyelids could only be that of midnight.

And then, he set off on his chase.

If a rich and powerful man truly wanted Akira dead, nothing would be more efficient than the cover of a false death—it would put the man off his trail, and the shōki would recover his swords and kill the demon before the sun rose. And, on the off-chance that the assassin’s employer was actually Maneki-neko herself... it gave Akira the unique opportunity of finding the demon's resting place.

Akira turned into an alley that, from shacks and shops, transformed the world into one of exquisite houses lit by red-and-gold lamps. Thunder rumbled, the air was cold with threatening rain, and the streets were empty—exactly what Yoshiwara had been like on the shōki’s first night in the city.

A horrible whisper in Akira's ear said that it would be his last night.

The eerie feeling of familiarity worsened as the fragrance led the shōki, unnervingly, to a house he knew too well—one that was the largest in the street, and resplendent with paintings of birds and flowers, all completed by the golden words above its doors. An iciness that did not come from the wind crawled onto the shōki’s skin—Akira wished, badly, that he had his swords.

Entering through the front door was out of the question; he turned another corner until he was at the very back of the house; it was less exquisite here, the paintings less and the walls faintly smelling of garbage. There was a small cat licking a lump off the cobbled ground. The cat blinked at him, and ran.

The scent called Akira upwards to one of the many floors of the house. After a moment's consideration, the shōki grabbed onto the wooden railings of the nearest window and began to scale the walls. He huffed and grabbed onto jutting stones, windows, and eaves, the sickly sweet smell of clematis growing stronger, the soft moans of patrons within the house audible to his ears. _I’m being close to dangerously stupid._ One wrong move, and Akira could see himself snapping his neck on the cobblestones below—his heart hammered in his chest and sweat broke across his brow. He had never liked heights.

He made it to a railing on what was likely the third floor when the scent became nearly tangible in its intensity. Akira listened carefully for any signs of movement beyond the window, and when silence belied the room's emptiness, he shoved the paper screens forcefully open and leapt inside.

Akira landed in a low crouch. The room, though empty, had small candles that flickered and cast a dim light on the interior. Golden light shone on plain blue matting, a neatly arranged futon, black cabinets and a small rosewood table. A kitsune mask lay on top of its glossy black surface, its ivory face reflecting candlelight.

Akira froze. The too-familiar scent of kiku flowers and vanilla—scents that made Akira's heart beat faster three nights ago—filled the room. Beneath it, the whisper of clematis fragrance.

And cinnamon.

An itchy, nervous feeling crawled over Akira's skin, and his heart picked up its pace—he could not be mistaken, he realized with wide eyes, these were the same scents that he—

_Could Teru be—?_

_No,_ he thought, shaking his head in disbelief. _I would never have fallen for such a cheap trick._ The scents—they still led somewhere, and _someone_ must have lit those candles. He walked in a small circle until he reached a black shelf from which the fragrance only intensified. The shelf rested on the wooden floor instead of tatami, and Akira saw long grooves scratched into panels beneath his feet—the piece of furniture had been dragged over the same spot, over and over, across time.

Akira's heart refused to calm down as he gripped the shelf, full of books, scrolls, combs and vials of perfume, and pushed it aside.

It revealed a small opening in the wall, the perfect size for a man to crawl through— _or cat to walk into,_ an unbidden thought in Akira's head said. There was a small glow coming from beyond the opening. A quick survey gave Akira nothing but silence, and he crawled into the entrance as quietly as possible.

What opened up before him was a small room that tickled his nose with sawdust—no, it wasn't a room—it was a small space within the walls of the brothel, barely enough to hold three men in its interiors; it was dusty, dark, smelling of pinewood and construction and the two scents Akira trailed. But it wasn't the scents that gave him pause.

The small space was full of treasure.

The floor was littered with expensive silk clothing that collected dust—there were sheets of every colored cloth imaginable, patterned with sigils of nobility and exquisite embroidery, and Akira realized that they were men’s kimono. Jewelry and ryo littered the ground like a child's discarded toys; rings, necklaces, and gold coins glittered in the light from the small candles— _who lit those?_ —at the corner of the enclosure. Beautiful hair combs glinted on the floor, ivory lying beside wooden ones. There were even weapons in the room—tanto daggers with beautiful hilts, knives, and kunai driven into the wooden panels. When Akira’s nose noted the tinge of blood in the air, he realized that these were the belongings of the demon's victims.

His own possessions were at the very top of the pile, his swords’ hilts glittering as if they were crown jewels. Nausea and distaste twisted in the shōki’s gut. He approached his swords, careful to not step on the combs—and suddenly gave pause when he heard a rustling to his left. Akira grabbed his silver sword and looked, his eyes narrowing as he saw something under a kimono _move—_

A white cat— _white?_ —poked its head out from under the kimono, blinking shiny green eyes at him. It meowed.

Akira’s heart pounded and he unsheathed his silver wakizashi—his sword scratched against the scabbard as the cat bowed its head, then grew and grew in size—it was like watching paint being scratched off to reveal the true surface underneath—the cat’s white fur turned grey, then into long, black locks, its feline countenance ghosting into a beautiful face; a small paw shed fur and turned into a lovely slim hand that kept the kimono around its body— _her_ body—closed.

Akira’s head spun as Keiko, wrapped in a man’s kimono, smiled. The eyes that were once dark and shiny in the dining room were now bright green.

“You’re not Maneki,” Akira said, his heart beat racing. He had no potions, he had no time to don his armor or his haori—the chance that he would walk away from Yoshiwara with no injury was ridiculously thin.

“I’m not,” Keiko said softly, sadly. "It's Teru."


	6. The Goddess of Yoshiwara - END

Once, when the shōki had been a whelp scarcely able to lift a training sword, he would sob noisily into his futon due to his aching, bleeding hands—received not from sparring but from his master's unique method of lecturing.

The old man had made Akira pore over book after book filled with the most dreadful depictions of demons until the whelp collapsed from exhaustion; the next day, he would drill into the boy questions about each demon recorded to exist—if the whelp answered incorrectly, a burning blow from a hard bamboo stick would strike his palms. His master would not stop, not even if blood began to show, not even if tears poured—only a satisfactory answer would make the blows halt.

And though it now meant that Akira's palms were riddled with tough skin and calluses, it also meant that he knew every important detail about monsters—even those as uncommon as the bakeneko. Even now that he was grown, Akira could not forget the drawing of the demon-cat from his master's scrolls—a snarling, shadowy creature, hulking and massive and dripping blood from its fangs. A force to be reckoned with even in its human form.

And Keiko was one of those things—and _even Teru?_

“Did you actually never suspect him?” Keiko asked, her face pinched and rueful. And here I worried that…” She shook her head. Her eyes shone like green lamps beneath the flickering candles. “All his questions about your skills, your methods—did it never seem strange to you?”

_‘Have you ever faced gods before?’_

_‘How do you manage to catch what is uncatchable?’_

_‘Would you now grace me with your stories from today?’_

Akira's head ached as memories washed over him—Teru's incessant questions about stories of hunts from Akira's past; his odd nervousness during their first dinner, his apprehension at the mention of Maneki-neko; his insistence on learning the details of Akira's investigation not more than three days ago. And the shōki recalled more things, more details that now so painfully and obviously pointed to Teru that he would have laughed had he the heart for it. He remembered, above all others, the assassin claiming that his employer’s voice had been deep and harsh—the exact tone Teru had sported when he screamed at thugs over Yoshiwara Bridge. The only time, it seemed, that he had ever been sincere in front of the shōki.

 _‘You shouldn’t think so highly of me,’_ Teru had once told him.

The hand holding the silver blade trembled ever so slightly with anger, with a rage that threatened to simmer over; if there was anything Akira hated, it was being misled and made a fool of—and Teru had played him like the strings of a _koto_ harp.

Akira scowled, and Keiko winced. “Yes, he lied to you. Teru told me he had every intention of seducing you and killing you in your sleep—he only changed his mind out of disgust.”

Akira seethed, fighting to regain his composure as he slammed his silver wakizashi back into its scabbard. _He fooled me. Gods be damned, he fooled me, and it worked._

_I am never falling for a pretty face again._

“Why are you telling me this, Keiko? You're betraying your own brother.” Akira said this slowly, forcibly quelling his bitter anger with cold professionalism. If he was angry, he would make a mistake. And he would be damned if he would let Teru play on his emotions again.

“Because he will die if I don't,” Keiko whispered weakly. Her green eyes slowly faded into their sweet brown color, her unpainted face turning pale. “He is too wild. He will not outwit his hunters for long. I noticed a strange scent on him last night—and you followed that to this room, didn’t you? It will only be a matter of time until the sohei will catch up as well. I told him so, and yet...” Keiko shook her head, her long waterfall of hair tumbling over the chest of the kimono she was wrapped in. “He will not stop his madness.”

“Will not,” Akira said pointedly, picking up his leather armor, “or _cannot?”_

Keiko frowned. “…what do you mean?”

“Answer my question.”

“I… I don’t know,” the lady answered, her face growing even wearier—as if she had witnessed Teru in his madness too many times. “There are days when he simply loses himself. If he hears, or sees, someone being abused, it's over. I've tried to teach and restrain him, but…”

“How was he created, Keiko?” Akira asked, setting to work on his neck guard.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with it.”

Something glimmered in Keiko's widening eyes—a dawning light of realization mixed with more than a pinch of horror. _She never suspected the truth herself,_ Akira thought, and he could almost pity her. He nearly wished that he did not have to ask her this.

“Spare no detail,” the shōki said in the most encouraging tone he could muster.

Keiko bit her lip, and told him.

“For as long as I was here,” she began, her voice trembling slightly, “there was a black street cat that kept sneaking into the kitchens and rooms; it gave the servants all kinds of trouble. Our young errand boy, Teruhiko, then decided one day to get rid of it. He caught the beast with a sack and took it to the edge of town in the dead of night. He locked the yowling burlap into a barrel of water and left the cat in there to drown.”

Akira could almost feel the stings of the bamboo rod again. _They are born from the intense emotion experienced at death,_ he had recited as his hands bled. _It is this emotion—this grudge—that gives them a new life._

_And a new purpose._

“A day passed, and as midnight struck again... a desperate young man who looked exactly like Teruhiko broke through the covering of the barrel. He was confused, he barely knew how to walk on his new feet, and he felt like he was bursting with rage. He began to stagger towards the place he remembered being in last, but he never made it far.” Keiko grimaced. “Drunk thugs saw him and... they tried to take advantage of him. They cut his face open in the struggle. It was the last mistake they made.” Her hand tightened around her kimono. “The young man turned into a beast and tore them apart.”

 _‘Drunk thugs,’_ the young guard had once said, recalling the same event six months ago. _‘Body parts everywhere.’_

“That beast shrank into the size of a tabby and ran here, to the Forest. He found Teruhiko in his bedroom and killed him just as he had the thugs. I was downstairs then, but I could smell the slaughter, so I went to see—in my cat self, of course. And I saw the man you know as Teru gnawing flesh off a femur.”

“And he experienced a fever after that, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Keiko murmured almost reluctantly. The sinking realization and nausea was undeniable in her eyes. “He had a fever, and all the while he screamed that… that he wanted to kill. At first, he was inexplicably furious whenever I called him Teruhiko, so I gave him a different name. I tried to guide him—to not be too emotional, lest his fangs and eyes reveal themselves; to not act so differently from his killer, to raise no suspicions. And for about half a year now,” she said with a heavy sigh, “he has lived in place of that errand boy. The rest of the story you know.”

Akira secured his vambraces, his lips thin as the new pieces of information sank into him. _The bakeneko,_ a whelp had croaked in a voice straining with unshed tears, _will later experience a delirious fever as the grudge overtakes its body. The demon will obey its grudge even to the point of death; it becomes its life purpose, and this creature cannot be described as truly free._

_Whatever experience the bakeneko felt before its fever will play a vital role in what the grudge will later demand._

He remembered the angry way Teru had said the word “thugs.” If Akira were not so irritated, if he did not feel like such a fool, perhaps he might have found it in himself to feel sorry for the scarred black cat he had faced in the street. _He can’t be anything but what he is._

_Just like me._

“Shōki,” Keiko ventured. Her voice was trembling even more. “Why did you ask me to tell you that?”

“What did you scream during your own fever, Keiko?”

The lady paused, her hand nervously twisting and tightening around the cloth that draped her. “…that I wanted to protect my mistress's children.”

 _These powerful demons are born only from either extreme hate or extreme love—this is the reason for their rarity._ It was obvious which side of the moon Keiko was born under—and from the look on her face, it was clear she suspected the truth behind her own actions.

“He does not deserve a sister like you,” Akira muttered, neglecting to answer her question; she did not need to know more about herself than necessary. “But what do you want me to do about all this? I’ve been contracted to kill a ravaging beast, Keiko, and that is exactly what he is.”

“Is that really what he is?” Keiko demanded, her voice straining. “Is that what he always will be? I’ve seen sides of him you never will, demon-queller—and he’s little more than a confused boy suffering with a mind full of memories that aren’t his own, drawn to blood and slaughter for some unknown reason! What he does—it’s not his own fault, is it?” She asked forcefully, and her eyes sharpened at the withdrawn frown on Akira’s face.

“Something _is_ pulling him,” Keiko whispered desperately as she tracked his features. “It has to do with the way he died, doesn’t it? I’ve seen it in his eyes— _that_ is the monster you want to kill, shōki, not my brother.”

“Keiko,” Akira said, sighing tiredly—this was not the first time he heard desperation from a monster, and he had become desensitized to tears. “Again—what the hell do you think I can do about it?”

“I—I don’t know,” Keiko admitted, huffing. “But you’re a shōki, for gods’ sake—you must know _something_! Take him out of the city, temper him by training him, or find some _shugenja_ who can get that _thing_ out of him—“

“Keiko,” Akira interrupted her. “You’re forgetting what shōki are for. They kill monsters, they don’t attempt to convert them.”

“For once, bastard,” the lady growled, her eyes flaring the way they did when Yotsuya had beaten her, “Will you make an _effort_ to save someone’s life?!”

Akira froze.

Keiko stood, her chest heaving. “That was the same thing you told me when Oiwa was nearly raped! _Shōki_ this and _demon-queller_ that—stop hiding behind these excuses! Just because you have cat’s eyes doesn’t mean you can’t act like a human, Akira. Just like me,” she growled, and her irises flickered into shining emeralds in her porcelain face. “And just like my brother can.”

 _Perhaps you’re the real villain in this story—_ that was that Maneki—what _Teru_ had accused him of a night ago in the alley that reeked of blood. Akira did not have the strength to even _think_ that that wasn’t the case; he had done too many mistakes in his stay in Yoshiwara, and the life of one woman and the sanity of another was now on his hands. He had done it for the sake of gold—and, yes, it was exactly what any proper shōki would have done—

But was it what a _human_ would have done?

_Am I even still a human?_

Now, as he looked at the green-eyed demon desperately trying to save a man she loved, he could not help but feel like she had more humanity than he did.

“I don’t think a murderous monster is all that my brother is,” Keiko said.

_I don’t think a murderous shōki is all that I am, either._

It was an unbidden thought, but a true one—it lashed out from the chamber in his mind that he thought was locked shut for good, where the small, broken heart of a crying whelp had survived and continued to scream, _‘I’m still a human!’_

Keiko slowly drew another hand out of the kimono that draped her shoulders. Her pale, dainty fingers opened to reveal three grass-colored rectangles resting on her palm—each was about the size of Akira’s thumb, the glitter of the shimmering surfaces belying quality.

“These are mine. I’ve been saving this during the whole two years I’ve been here,” Her voice was soft as spider’s silk. “Three pieces of jade—one is for everything Teru will need. Another is for everything he will require to come home when the time is right. And the last,” she extended her feminine hand toward him, “is for my own contract, shōki.”

“I want you to bring him out of the city,” Keiko continued. “And stop him from being a monster. It will fulfill both Lady Mameha’s contract—and mine.”

Akira, on principle, did not take more than two contracts at once—it caused too many conflicts of loyalty, too many complications as to what the fate of the monster ought to be. But now he felt that fulfilling Keiko’s contract might be one of the few chances in his life where he could do what was right.

Akira took the jade pieces from Keiko’s palm and nodded. This close, he could see the faded bruising on her lower lip—and he could also see in her green eyes that she had finally forgiven him for it.

_I entered Yoshiwara and took a life._

_Maybe I can leave it while saving one._

Teru held an umbrella over his head. The heavy rain pelted against the oil paper, causing relaxing, satisfying noises to tap around the demon's ears. In the distance, thunder pealed.

He felt alive.

He gazed at the statue— _his_ statue, he supposed he could call it—and he smiled softly as he pet the cold, wet head. His fingers played with dull yellow beads that a worshipper had slung around the stone ear, and the wet glass of it was smooth and icy against his fingers. It was pretty; a shame that it clashed against his own complexion—he would have taken it otherwise.

Teru grinned as he remembered his little joke. _'From an admirer,'_ he had told the shōki, and the demon had felt an insanely powerful sense of satisfaction at the subtle hurt that appeared on the bastard’s face.

 _If only he knew,_ Teru mused, running his hand along the yellow beads that were so much like the red ones dangling off his neck. _If only he knew._

Akira was soaked.

The rain had only gotten harder as he walked through the midnight streets of Yoshiwara; no moonlight shone on the city, and only the ghostly light of the streetlamps and their silvery-gold reflections on the puddles lit Akira's way. Lightning at times flashed and turned the night into day, quickly followed by a roar of thunder that shook the eaves of brothels and stores. Rain splashed into his toes, trickled in rivulets down his spine, and it was only his mutations that kept him from feeling the true iciness of the autumn rain.

After Keiko had left him in that small room, Akira had immediately set about creating his potions. He prepared the customary two and, after forcibly speeding up the ebullition by heating it over the candles, forced the burning liquid into his throat. After a moment's hesitation, he prepared one more. He hoped he would not have to use it.

The scent of cinnamon and clematis drew Akira to the square despite the overpowering smell of petrichor. In the shimmering rain, everything in Yoshiwara’s center shone like metalwork—the closed-up shops and large merchants’ houses turned silvery and mysterious in the dim lights, rain adding a shine like lacquer. But the lacquer shine, Akira knew, could cause him to slip and fall into death's grasp in the fight to come. He had learned a hard lesson on the misleading nature of beauty, and he did not intend to forget it.

Finally, Akira saw him.

A slight young man with hair so long it brushed his thighs. His back was turned, and he held an umbrella over his head—he was so close to the statue that he stepped on some offerings that lay on the pedestal. As Akira walked closer, he noticed how tightly the dark hakama pants were tied around his waist, how close his salmon-colored kimono clung to his abdomen; Teru was truly so slim and so pretty that he could easily be mistaken for a woman.

Once, Akira's heart beat faster at the sight of him—it did so again, but for an entirely different reason.

“Teru,” the shōki growled, uncontrollable anger beating hard in his pulse. He was not entirely sure what he wanted to say— _you damned trickster, you foolish idiot, you juvenile ideologue_ —but he never got the chance to say more.

Teru turned sharply, and his eyes widened the second their eyes met.

 _“What the—“_ He swore and he slammed his back into the statue of Maneki-neko, the umbrella falling from his hands. His pretty features were contorted in absolute horror at the milk-white face he was seeing—at the _dead man's face_ —and Akira saw his dark eyes flash into gold, saw small ivory pins shoot out just beneath his lips.

“I thought—shōki—“ Teru broke off with a wince. He pressed a hand to his lower lip, where his own fangs had pierced him. A thin line of red trickled down his chin.

 _“Shit,”_ Teru swore.

“No use keeping pretenses now,” Akira stated, his eyes narrowing at the sight of Teru's true face. Pupils as thin as slits, eyes a shade more yellow than Akira’s—the eyes of a graceful tiger bound to kill prey that had backs turned.

“You,” Teru growled in a rough voice—his _natural_ voice, his voice when he was not trying to seduce a weary warrior. _“You're supposed to be dead!”_

“I'm full of surprises,” Akira said. “As are you.”

Lightning flashed, and Akira saw Teru’s fangs glint like blades in daylight. The demon drew a long knife from within his sleeve—it was a _tanto_ dagger as long as his forearm, and its decorated hilt shone in the rain. 

“At least you're no longer starin' at me like I'm a fuckin' piece of meat,” Teru muttered. He began to swap his dagger from one hand to another, the blade turning into a beam of light dancing between his palms. The effect was almost hypnotic—or at least, that was what Akira allowed the demon to believe.

“How's this supposed to go, eh?” The demon asked, stepping forward ever so slightly. “You gonna try to kill me now?”

Akira’s mouth twisted bitterly—he prided himself on his self-control, and so clenched the fingers that itched to draw his silver sword. The young man in front of him—infuriating, traitorous thing that he was—did not have to die. Akira did not want to kill unnecessarily a second time.

“I don't have to,” Akira spat at last. “Your reckless actions will be the ones to bring you to the executioner's block—no, not the executioner's block. Something a thousand times worse.” He saw Teru's golden gaze nervously waver, and the shōki thought, _ah, yes, you’ve heard the rumors_ —the rumors of the sohei torturing demons to no end, to extract ink-black marrow and sinew and gods-knew-what-else in order to create medicines for man.

“Just look at you,” Akira sneered. “Do you really expect to avoid an army of sohei for long, when you turn at just the sight of me?" His lips curled. “Do you know how the sohei handle your ilk specifically, bakeneko? Do you know what it will be like, when they strap you down and—“

“The fuck's it matter to you?!” Teru snapped, gripping his dagger tight. “Say what you want to say!”

Akira inhaled sharply. His eyes shut tight for a moment, and he recalled Keiko, recalled her green eyes and her words.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Akira said as calmly as could be mustered. Thunder roared, and it threatened to drown out his words. “But if you keep this up, you will wish you had drowned in that barrel instead.”

At the word _barrel,_ Teru growled, fangs flashing—

And he lunged.

It wasn't anything like fighting the assassin. The assassin was human, and Teru was a yellow-eyed monster—he was so quick that Akira barely had enough time to draw his silver blade, and it shuddered against Teru’s strength when Akira parried blade against blade. Though he was not in cat form, a berserk, human bakeneko—with its eyes and fangs out—rivaled a shōki.

The demon fought like a street thug; rough and improperly trained, he lunged for another blow just as soon as Akira fought him off, his dagger and necklace a silver-and-red streak as he dove, sidestepped, and drove his knife into the air where Akira stood seconds ago, his fangs bared in his twisted, hungry snarl. Akira just narrowly avoided the tanto, his body swerving and reeling just as he was taught, but he did not use his sword for anything other than to defend—Akira had goaded him for the exact reason of pulling the demon into a fight. _I’m going to knock you out,_ Akira thought, and his blade sang as Teru's knife slammed into it instead of flesh yet again.

An inhuman, frustrated growl left the demon's throat. And Akira decided to stop playing the defensive.

The shōki came forward in a blinding rush, close enough that he could hear Teru's breath stutter in fear-shock-panic—Akira swung his arm hard, faster than even for his own eyes to see, and a line of red streaked itself across Teru's chest. The man howled and there was something else in his eyes now, a desperation as he held his knife out—and before Teru could even move Akira danced forward and sliced the back of his armed hand.

Akira leapt just as Teru weakly slashed the air, his pain-hampered movement scattering red drops onto the cobblestones.

“Give up," Akira ordered. “You can't win against me, Teru. You're only alive because I haven't decided to kill you yet.”

Teru swore and when he came forward, it was fast and smooth and he suddenly tossed his knife from one hand to another to misdirect the shōki—and he almost made contact. Almost. He might have even succeeded—if he hadn't been so stupid as to show Akira that trick beforehand, if he hadn't been hampered by his bleeding wounds.

Akira ducked beneath the knife and drew the Sign of Arudi against Teru's chest.

A powerful blast of air slammed into Teru, plummeting him back-first into the statue's pedestal; the impact knocked over beads and bowls and they scattered across the street, clattering like raindrops. Teru had slammed the back of his head into the stone—a small, almost indiscernible trickle of red ran down the pedestal. The demon rose slowly, groaning—Akira's fingers twitched in annoyance; he had hoped to knock him out—and the shōki walked forward swiftly, calmly, and poised the tip of his silver blade above Teru's throat.

“Give up, damn you,” Akira said in a hiss. “You're not skilled enough to kill me.”

A sick smile that said, _‘is that so?’_ split across Teru’s face.

He knocked Akira's blade aside with the dagger and he sprang up to his feet. Leaping aside, cat-like, agile and without warning, he threw his dagger straight for Akira's face. The shōki tossed the blade aside with a lazy swipe of his sword, but Teru didn't appear concerned—no, he was smiling still, and Akira realized suddenly that it was a mistake to let Teru get away from his silver blade.

“Don't!” Akira snarled, but it was too late.

Teru transformed.

It all happened within seconds; Akira's mutated ears heard the _sound_ of it first—the horrible cracking sound of bones breaking and twisting into a new shape as Teru bowed his head and grew in size, his graceful body turning into a hulking black mass that tore apart the silk and cotton of his clothing. His long hair shortened and black fur rippled across his ivory skin, his graceful hands turning into clawed paws that tore at rest of his kimono, the large, hooked cat nails of his feet tearing through his white socks and the straps of his sandals; his long red necklace tightened around the large neck, and it now looked like the expensive collar of an equally expensive beast. Whiskers bristled in the air and two pointed ears—standing like the horns of an _oni_ —silhouetted against the rain.

What was in front of Akira was no longer a graceful man, but a massive, panther-like creature with powerful, sinewy limbs, two tails that agitatedly whipped the air, and yellow eyes shining like gems against the onyx fur of a feline face.

Teru growled, a soft rumble that sounded like a sneer. He stalked around Akira on his paws, deft and predatory; his claws shone, his sharp teeth glittered, and Akira did not forget that those fangs could cut a man in half.

Teru pounced and slammed his claws down with so much force that cobblestone shards flew in the air. His black body blended into the dark surroundings, and Akira only just avoided his sharp claws with a spin, and another, whirling away from the cat as it swiped and lunged with its teeth; Teru was so quick that Akira threatened to slip on the wet street, his growls and hissing reverberating loudly in Akira's ears. Akira spun with his blade poised above his head, and for one second the orange sigil on the shōki's sleeve shone light into the demon's eyes.

Teru hissed and leapt backward, hackles rising—and immediately he lunged again. His claws shrieked against the cobblestones when his paws missed the shōki, and Akira twisted with his blade out, meaning to wound Teru again, slightly, to show him that he was being a _gods-damned fool—_

He miscalculated.

Teru leapt too far toward him, lunged too hard; instead of nicking only a portion of his shoulder blades, Akira's silver blade sank deeply into muscle and sinew before he could yank it out, and when he pulled his blade free, bright red drops sprayed into the air like a shower of rubies.

Teru howled in pain—a loud, thunderous scream that forced Akira to cover one ear with his hand and yell out, “Shut up! The entire city will—“

The demon ran from Akira, his body a fast, black haze that disappeared in the darkness between the shops. Akira swore and he flicked his silver blade, cleansing it of bright demon's blood— _that damn idiot,_ he thought.

The rain-glistened alleys and shops blurred around Akira as he sped past, his body straining. He could hear a rhythmic pattern as he was led further into the darkness—the susurration of soft paws speeding across the cobblestones, slowly turning into the slap of naked feet— _human feet,_ Akira realized—against the street. Akira rounded a corner where he nearly slipped in red-stained water, and he halted in his tracks.

Once again, he and the demon were alone in an alley—but unlike the previous night, it was not narrow but wide, flanked on one side by a tailors’ shop and the other by a brothel, its bamboo cage empty. He could see Teru clearly—his red-stained chest was heaving and blood dripped down the entirety of his right arm. Nothing covered him but his long, dark hair, though he showed no sign of bashfulness. Only an ugly snarl on his pretty face.

He raised a red-soaked hand, and blue fire suddenly flared from between his fingertips. Akira stepped backward, holding his sword in the _te ura gasumi,_ his orange sigils flashing; Teru hissed—completely like a cat—and more azure flames appeared, licking at his feet and up his bare legs, bursting along his left arm, fireballs flickering to life above his head like ghostly lanterns held up by invisible servants. The rain turned to steam against the flames.

“ _You_ are the one who’ll give up,” Teru said, panting harshly. The blue glow made him look like a spirit, and the walls appeared to be his ensconced shrine. “Or I'll burn everyone in this street alive!”

Akira walked closer, his sigil flashing more and more in the blue light. “No,” he said as Teru winced at the runes, “You won't. You can't do it at all, can you, Teru?”

The fire around Teru flickered, mirroring its caster's nervousness—then flared.

“Shut up!” Teru yelled, and he swung his arm as if he were stabbing down with his tanto—the blue fire rushed toward Akira, screaming and whistling like wraiths; he spun as far as he could in the street but heat and pain still scorched along his forearm—but that was all, nothing else hurt him as he pressed himself against the tailor’s shop, yet there was a crackling noise behind his back and a warmth that felt like bright sunlight.

Akira turned, and he saw that the blue fire had collided into a stack of wood leaning against a likewise wooden house; despite the rain, the fire ate up the wall and timber quickly like kindling and reached the stone eaves, screaming and roaring as wood burned—it reached another house, then another, then the tailor’s shop; Akira leapt backwards from the flames and the sharp, choking scent and dark curtain of smoke soon stuffed the entirety of the street. The inferno ravaged further and a scream reached Akira's ears—a hoarse voice yelling _“Fire! Fire!”_

The blue tendrils of flame clawed up the night sky like a beacon screaming for attention. In the far, far distance, Akira heard the sound of dogs barking, of feet racing.

Akira turned around slowly, facing Teru. The young man's golden eyes were wide with shock. “I—I didn’t mean—“

“You're coming with me, you reckless idiot,” Akira ground out. The shōki raced forward into the smoke and shadows and Teru leapt back into it; he heard the nauseating sound of bones cracking, and then the dark sillhouette of a man turned into a feline figure as Teru ran further away from his crime. The demon was tiring, and Akira had enough stamina to nearly be abreast of him, to hear the panic in his breath, the rustle of his fur—

And Akira sensed something else—

“Stop, Teru!” He heard what the beast couldn't—the clattering of armor and the pounding of metal-clad feet against the stones; the dōshin were now racing toward the street, and their armed mugs were about to come face to face with a demon. “You _idiot!”_

Akira bounded towards the demon, sword in an icepick grip—he meant to knock the demon out with the pommel of his blade, but Teru was too quick; the hilt struck down on his wounded shoulder instead. The demon screamed so loudly that Akira's ears rang. His hearing was not so bad, however, that he did not hear the surprised yells of the nearby residents in their houses, the sound of opening doors, the oncoming of even more footsteps. Akira's heart beat prey fast—more people were going to be mixed into this.

The demon raced forward, limping, before finally slumping against the wall several feet away. Akira walked forward slowly to give him another blow across the head—and stopped. A glow was approaching.

The red-orange glow of the lamps of Yoshiwara's dōshin.

Their shadows reached the alley first; there was a silhouette of five men, their buckets, lamps, spears, and bows grotesquely sticking out of their dark bodies like monstrous appendages. The glow of their lanterns lit up the walls, the floor, and their own faces—which contorted into sharp fear and horror when their light rested upon the slumped, black demon that lay mewling and bleeding on the cobblestones.

The shouts and gasps of men rose at the same time as Teru hissed. The sharp ends of their spears and arrows harshly reflected the lamplight as they, on instinct, shakily lowered their weapons to aim them at the demon. Teru's hissing turned into a prolonged growl—a clear warning. Almost imperceptible blue fire flickered beneath his paws.

“Get away from him!” Akira commanded; he swept forward to finally knock the demon out—and it was a mistake.

There was a sharp whistle of wind, and Akira pressed himself hard against the wall—in the same second, he felt the feathered end of an arrow brush against his cheek. Fired, no doubt, by a shaking young man too frightened to think.

Coldness shivered down the shōki's spine.

“Why the hell are you shooting?!” a voice from the distance yelled.

The guards at the alley entrance were quivering shadows, their teeth clattering in fear. Teru got to his feet very, very slowly, his growl growing louder—fire now trickled out of his mouth like water.

“Sir, there's a—“ one of the guards broke off in a half-snatched whisper of prayer. “Oh, ye gods, a demon is…”

The five shadows became six, and Akira saw light reflect off of the steel-plated helmet of the approaching captain of the guard.

 _“Gods,”_ the sixth shadow exclaimed. “Kill the demon, damn you!”

Arrows knocked and gleamed; spear-points shone in the light. And Teru opened his mouth.

A gust of blue fire exploded from the demon's maw, so hot that Akira felt its heat even at a distance—but he was still close enough to hear the screams, the strangled cries, the sound of flesh boiling and _sizzling_ against the super-heated steel of their armor. Akira felt sick nausea crawl up his throat, but when he saw Teru settle onto his haunches as if about to pounce through the fire, he still found it in himself to yell.

“Don't go there!”

Teru shot one yellow-eyed look at him, then pounced over the burning, still-twitching men. He ran out into the street, turning into a darker shape against the dark distance—and froze.

Akira knew why. Even the smallest fire was absolutely perilous to any Hyugan city; all buildings were constructed from wood, and to make matters worse, they were packed tightly together. This meant that the city guard would spare no man when it came to quenching arising flames; a small team would tackle the fires while a much, much larger force would be lying in wait, ready to supply more water and support.

Akira trudged forward, the smell of charred flesh and Teru's blood suffocating him—he could see what Teru saw; the glinting of dozens of arrowheads, of shining spears, of thirty—or even more—golden points of light flickering from dōshin lamps.

The demon was surrounded.

Akira stepped out onto the street. His pupils narrowed at the blinding light cast by the lamps and sighted the chaos. There were citizens gawking, men and women holding buckets of water frozen at the sight of the burning bodies, at the monstrous two-tailed cat hissing on the street. Only a few found it in themselves to walk past Akira and march toward the fire, their buckets sloshing in their shaking hands.

The city guard who had just witnessed five good men and their captain burn alive were a more diverse bunch; a large number were wide-eyed and trembling—Akira could smell the scent of the sweat and piss born from their fear—and one was retching onto the cobblestones. But some had the presence of mind to knock their arrows and point their spears at the demon, and one particular dōshin—his spear tight in his hands—was screaming.

His voice was all too familiar to the shōki.

 _“Konoyarou!_ Bastard!” The young guard screamed at the cowering, bleeding demon. The lamplight illuminated his twisted snarl, his furious red eyes. “That was my brother you just burned!”

The demon was convulsing, his hackles raised, his body strained and jerking as his head glanced to and fro at the armed men surrounding him. A whine escaped his throat as he backed away from the young guard’s spear.

“Don't attack!” Akira shouted at the doshin. He didn't move forward—he knew all too well what jittery men armed with bows would do when surprised by sudden movement. “You there! Don't—“

Whether because of the sudden peal of thunder or the blood pounding in his own ears, the young guard did not hear Akira—and he threw his spear into the air with a yell.

Teru turned to run, but with the short distance and the strength of the throw there was no way he could escape the sleek, sharp weapon tracing a parabola in the air. Akira heard, rather than saw, the spear thrust into the demon's haunch—the sick wet sound of tearing flesh and bursting arteries was too loud in his mutated ears. _Fatal,_ Akira thought, horrified, _he’s going to bleed to death._ The demon howled so loudly and deafeningly that Akira nearly did not hear the young dōshin yelling “Fire!”

The sharp hiss of loosed arrows mixed into the sound of pelting rain, and Akira ran forward harder than he ever had in his life; his surroundings hazed, a muscle in his calf tore, and Akira threw himself in front of the demon that was slowly, desperately, turning itself back into a man. The shōki, for one moment, saw certain death raining down on him in the form of flint arrowheads—

He quickly etched Sign of Puran into the air.

The arrows froze mid-flight, vibrating ever so slightly against the magic field of the Sign. Then they slammed onto the stones.

Their light arrowheads and fragile shafts shattered with painful crunches, crashing and breaking against the street like falling porcelain. A few more arrows were shot, but they only joined their brethren as broken heaps on the ground. Swears and yells erupted all over the street and the young guard, his mouth slack, stared hard at Akira with bleary eyes.

“You...” his breathing was ragged, his fingers twitching. Akira heard whimpering behind him—human whimpering, from Teru's now-human throat. The young guard pointed at Akira with a shaky finger. “Shōki-san. Your voice. I heard you yell earlier... for the men to get away from that—that thing." His lips twisted downward. “Why are you protecting this demon?! Kill it!”

Akira raised a hand in a placating gesture, his mind whirling for something to say. He realized dimly that, on the end of this street, he would find the Forest—and that this street was full of people who knew him.

More people were gathering around the demon and the city guard—rich citizens as well as commoners who had escaped their houses for fear of the inferno; they now stood around the guards, whispering and insulting. _Too many onlookers,_ Akira thought, colder sweat mixing with the cold rainwater that ran down his back. _If I don't say the right thing, this will turn into a riot._

The roar of the now-distant fire weakened.

“Bakeneko are cursed beings,” Akira explained quickly and loudly. “If you kill one, a curse will rest upon everyone within vicinity. Only shōki are immune. I will slay it,” Akira added, his eyes tracking the emotion on the young guard's face, on the expressions of all the other onlookers, “but outside the city. And soon, before its body regenerates.”

Behind him, Teru was laughing. It was the ragged, choked laughter of a man half-insane from pain and fear.

The emotion on the young guard's face was unreadable—and then he nodded.

“A horse!” He called out loudly to the men. The city guard obeyed him quickly—the youthful man’s bravery at spearing a demon, along with his grief-roughened voice, stamped him with an unspoken authority. Relief poured over Akira's body as he saw one man, dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant, draw a reined horse toward him.

Akira turned around to look at Teru. He was hissing and trying to prop himself up, no doubt meaning to stand and run again—but the back of his left thigh was too mangled and too bloody for him to even put any weight on it. The demon's red-streaked lips were twisted in a grimace, his own fangs digging into his own mouth. Akira glared down at him, at this conniving snake, at this pathetic self-proclaimed executioner who just killed six men who were only fulfilling their duty. His disgust at the sight of the blood-and-rain-streaked face was impossible to describe.

Akira raised his silver blade, and slammed the back of it down onto Teru's head.

Teru crumpled onto the stones. Citizens and guards were both gawking at the fallen goddess of Yoshiwara, exclaiming and murmuring—someone in the crowd cried out, “Is that Teruhiko-san?!”

Akira sheathed his silver blade and, grudgingly aware of the number of people surrounding them, shook off his haori and wrapped it around the demon's naked body. Then with reluctance and disgust, he put one arm behind Teru's shoulders and another behind his knees to carry him. He was surprisingly light, and his pulsing blood was warm as it dripped onto Akira's forearms.

When the shōki looked up, the young guard stood before him, the reins of a nervous black gelding clenched in his fist. His once-bright eyes were now dark and dead, and Akira could not help but feel guilt and an odd sense of loss—the young man could not have been more than twenty, and he had aged too soon in one night.

“Avenge my brother,” the man rasped as Akira lay the demon on top of the horse's saddle; the gelding whinnied nervously at the feel and smell of dripping blood, at the shōki's unnerving presence and appearance.

“I will,” Akira said as he drew the Sign of Akusi before the horse's eyes. It calmed immediately, but Akira could not say the same for the nausea bubbling in his gut. He felt like a liar. He _was_ a liar. “When you see a plume of smoke erupt at dawn, you will know the demon is dead.”

The stiffness in the young guard's shoulders eased, and Akira quickly looked away. A headache was pulsing in his temples. _I know what I need to do,_ he thought as he pulled a thin silver chain out of his pouch. He crossed Teru's hands behind his back and bound his wrists tightly together. _I'll have to—_

“Watch out!”

Akira dodged; a rock that soared for his head pelted against the saddle, and he only managed to keep the horse from bolting by gripping hard on the reins. He turned around sharply to see the assailant, and—

Akira blinked.

A small group of young women had shoved themselves past the wall of dōshin. Their hair was wild and tousled, and they looked furious, despairing, and had rocks clenched in their shaking fists. The city dōshin returned to their senses and began nearing them, yelling at them, and Akira would have told them off had the young guard not lain a stern hand on his shoulder.

“Things are about to become ugly,” he told Akira. “You should go now, shōki-san. This is not your fight anymore.”

Akira gave the women one last look—one of them fixed Akira with her large, large eyes, and he saw her mouth the word _“Bastard.”_

The shōki hoisted himself onto the horse, one hand braced on Teru's abdomen and the other tightly holding the reins. He did his best to ignore the sounds of sobs, of curses, of dōshin yelling at women. The rain was dying down into a drizzle—he could now clearly see the large number of commoners gaping at him. Among them was one well-dressed lady with a Kondo servant holding an umbrella over her head.

Mameha walked forward elegantly, the crowd parting before her high-class clothing. Her face was strained.

“Well done,” she said hoarsely, her eyes transfixed on the unconscious man slumped against Akira's chest. The yosei servant tossed a pouch almost disdainfully towards Akira and he caught it, the gold pieces inside hard and cold through the cotton cloth.

After everything that happened, after all the death that was now on his hands, the ryō did not feel like much compensation. But Akira was not about to complain.

The shōki gave Lady Mameha one respectful nod, then he kicked his heels into the horse's sides; the gelding spurred forward and the crowd parted, the women's curses disappearing behind him as his mount galloped through the cobbled streets.

He passed by the Forest, by the beautifully painted brothels beside it; he passed the cat statue and the red-railed bridge, where the ghostly wailing of the mad oiran mixed with the wind whistling in his ears. One contract done, and more faces weighed on his conscience. No matter how quickly the horse beneath him galloped, he could not escape the sight of the madwoman, of the girls weeping over their fallen god.

_‘How do you feel, knowing that if you kill me, this city will return to what it was?’_

He neared the city gates that he had walked through merely five days ago. They opened before him, and in the slowly dawning light, he could see the fields, mountains, and wilderness that waited beyond, the hard Path to which he would inevitably return to no matter how much he disliked it.

The shōki left Yoshiwara with a demon bleeding onto his chest.

He did not see it, but on the watchtower that flanked the heavy city gates, a white, two-tailed cat watched him ride toward the sunrise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, the contract for the Demon of Yoshiwara has ended.
> 
> But the tales do not end here! This work is on hiatus for the meantime because the next short story has me in a bit of bind, but I am by no means stopping!


End file.
